A theory of social comparison processes
Festinger's 1954 paper proposes that people have a drive to evaluate their own opinions and abilities, and that this drive explains a great deal of social behaviour. His argument begins with why accuracy matters: acting on a wrong belief about the world, or a wrong estimate of what you can do, is costly and occasionally fatal, so the machinery that checks both is not vanity. Where an objective test exists, people use it. Where none exists, and he argues this covers most opinions and many abilities, the only available standard is other people, so evaluation proceeds by comparison. The paper's further claims are the ones the field built on: that people prefer to compare themselves with others who are similar rather than with those far above or below, that comparison pressures groups towards uniformity of opinion, and that the drive weakens as the other person becomes less comparable. It is the founding statement of social comparison theory and remains one of the most cited papers in social psychology.
Festinger's 1954 paper proposes that people have a drive to evaluate their own opinions and abilities, and that this drive explains a great deal of social behaviour. His argument begins with why accuracy matters: acting on a wrong belief about the world, or a wrong estimate of what you can do, is costly and occasionally fatal, so the machinery that checks both is not vanity. Where an objective test exists, people use it. Where none exists, and he argues this covers most opinions and many abilities, the only available standard is other people, so evaluation proceeds by comparison. The paper's further claims are the ones the field built on: that people prefer to compare themselves with others who are similar rather than with those far above or below, that comparison pressures groups towards uniformity of opinion, and that the drive weakens as the other person becomes less comparable. It is the founding statement of social comparison theory and remains one of the most cited papers in social psychology.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Festinger, L. (1954). "A theory of social comparison processes." Human Relations, 7(2), 117-140. doi:10.1177/001872675400700202
Where we use it
- Nobody Is Born Consistent, Why We Move
Reliability of this reference
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The source
https://doi.org/10.1177/001872675400700202
DOI: 10.1177/001872675400700202