Gendered Influence of Downward Social Comparisons on Current and Possible Selves

In school and academic settings students usually know who is doing well and who is doing poorly: Grades may be posted, students look at one another's papers, and everyone notices who fails to show up at school anymore. What are the implications of learning about another person's failure for assessment of one's own cur rent and future academic competence? Most social-comparison theories assume that a comparison with a worse-off other provides people with an opportunity for self-enhancement as another's misery makes one's own situation look more promising (Brickman & Bulman, 1977; Hakmiller, 1966; Wills, 1981), especially if failure in the domain could undermine self-competence or self-worth (Tesser, 1988). Thus, downward comparisons tend to improve one's outlook and increase one's confidence (e.g., Gilbert, Giesler, & Morris, 1995; Pelham & Wachsmuth, 1995). Social comparisons also serve people's needs for accurate self-assessment (Festinger, 1954), however, and taking the failure of another person into account may provide diagnostic information about potential dangers and pitfalls facing the self(Trope, 1986). Hence, rather than giving rise to self-enhancement, information about a worse-off other may spark a realistic reassessment and downward adjustment of one's own chances of success and failure. A downward adjustment may be especially likely when the other is viewed as similar to the self and one feels a sense of connection with the other (Buunk & Ybema, 1997).

Gender and Self-Schemas

We propose that the choice between downward and upward adjustment given a social comparison is at least to some degree gendered and follows from gender specific differences in underlying structure of the self-concepts. A plethora of research shows that men and women tend to differ with regard to how much they define themselves as autonomous agents versus view themselves as connected to and embedded in relationships with others (e.g., Bakan, 1966; Cross & Madson, 1997; Gilligan, 1982; Helgeson, 1994; Lykes, 1985; Markus & Oyserman, 1989). Men are more likely to have independent self-construals that focus on personal uniqueness, self-determination, and personal agency. Among other things, this leads to a more pronounced tendency to self-enhance. For example, men overestimate the degree to which their own characteristics and abilities are unique and unshared by others (Goethals, Messick & Allison, 1991). Men also tend to be more overconfident about their performance (Beyer, 1990) and boastful of their accomplishments (Heatherington et al., 1993).

By comparison, women are more likely to have interdependent self-construals that focus on the self as contextualized and embedded in relationships with others. For example, women are more interested in their relationships (Acitelli, 1993), pay more attention to others (Ickes, Robertson, Tooke, & Teng, 1986), and recall more information about others with whom they share a relationship (Josephs, Markus, & Tafarodi, 1992). In general, compared to men, women are more likely to be sensitive to others' feelings, to empathize with them, and to be responsive to others' feedback (Dunn, Bretherton, & Munn, 1987; Roberts, 1991; Schwalbe & Staples, 1991; see Cross and Madson, 1997, for a comprehensive review of gender differences in independence and interdependence).