The Psychology of Competition: A Social Comparison Perspective
Abstract
Social comparison-the tendency to self-evaluate by comparing ourselves to others-is an important source of competitive behavior. We propose a new model that distinguishes between individual and situational factors that increase social comparison and thus lead to a range of competitive attitudes and behavior. Individual factors are those that vary from person to person: the relevance of the performance dimension, the similarity of rivals, and their relationship closeness to the individual, as well as the various individual differences variables relating to social comparison more generally. Situational factors, conversely, are those factors on the social comparison landscape that affect similarly situated individuals: proximity to a standard (i.e., near the number 1 ranking vs. far away), the number of competitors (i.e., few vs. many), social category fault lines (i.e., disputes across vs. within social categories), and more. The distinction between individual and situational factors also helps chart future directions for social comparison research and generates new vistas across psychology and related disciplines.
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Social comparison induces competition.
“Thus, social comparison induces competition (Festinger, 1954;Garcia, Tor, & Schiff, 2013), and competition increases individual effort.”
From Relative Feedback Increases Disparities in Effort and Performance in Crowdsourcing Contests (2022) · cites this paper as Garcia, Tor, & Schiff, 2013
Competition increases individual effort.
“Thus, social comparison induces competition (Festinger, 1954;Garcia, Tor, & Schiff, 2013), and competition increases individual effort.”
From Relative Feedback Increases Disparities in Effort and Performance in Crowdsourcing Contests (2022) · cites this paper as Garcia, Tor, & Schiff, 2013
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Social Loafing and Motivation Gains in Groups: An Integrative Review
Karau, S. J., & Wilhau, A. J. (2020) · Individual Motivation within Groups · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-849867-5.00001-x · Cited by 50 · see citing works
Relative Feedback Increases Disparities in Effort and Performance in Crowdsourcing Contests
Tsvetkova, M., Müller, S., Vuculescu, O., Ham, H., & Sergeev, R. A. (2022) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3555649 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
- Authors
- Garcia, S. M., Tor, A., & Schiff, T. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- University of Notre Dame (US)
- ORCID
- Garcia, Stephen M.
- Venue
- Perspectives on Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2013-11
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 634-650
- ISSN
- 1745-6916 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-6924
- OpenAlex
- W3122943863
- Cited by
- 520
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 50 · 2025: 66 · 2024: 57 · 2023: 52 · 2022: 50 · 2021: 50 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 36 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 41 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 6 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 51.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Perspectives on Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Emotions and Moral Behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Sport Psychology and Performance
- Keywords
- competition, social comparison, competitive behavior, competitive attitude, individual differences, situational factors, relationship closeness, performance evaluation, number of competitors
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