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Handbook of Social Comparison pp 353–378Cite as

Social Judgment as Implicit Social Comparison

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Part of the book series: The Springer Series in Social Clinical Psychology ((SSSC))

Abstract

At first blush, this chapter will appear to be in the wrong book. The volume focuses on what theorists and researchers know and sometimes suspect about social comparison processes. By definition, these are processes by which people come to know and understand themselves through comparing themselves and their behavior with other people. Over the years, researchers have discovered quite a bit about what spurs people on to make social comparisons, the processes by which they make those comparisons, the people that they choose to compare themselves with, and the consequences of this comparison activity (for reviews beyond this volume, see Collins, 1996; Suls & Wills, 1991; Wills, 1981; Wood, 1989). These researchers have discovered that social comparison is a frequent and ubiquitous activity in the mental life of the social animal, with consequences for how people think about themselves and their social worlds. Indeed, these discoveries began with Leon Festinger’s classic article on the topic in 1954, and the decades have diminished neither the importance nor the value of theories of social comparison.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 14853-7601, USA

    David Dunning

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  1. David Dunning
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

    Jerry Suls

  2. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Ladd Wheeler

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Dunning, D. (2000). Social Judgment as Implicit Social Comparison. In: Suls, J., Wheeler, L. (eds) Handbook of Social Comparison. The Springer Series in Social Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4237-7_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4237-7_17

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