(How Much) Do Temporal Social Comparisons Matter? A Replication of Study 1a of Reh, Tröster, and Van Quaquebeke (2018)

Roman Briker, Frank Walter*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Moving beyond static perspectives in social comparison theory, Reh and colleagues (2018) provided initial evidence for the relevance of “temporal social comparisons”(i.e., comparing one’s own with others’past development over time on a salient dimension). Although this research has received wide attention, the study illustrating the authors’basic rationale (Study 1a) suffered from a small sample size, and its results did not reach conventional significance levels. Thus, we provide a direct, preregistered, and high-powered replication of this study.
Our results corroborate the original conclusions, indicating that unfavorable temporal social comparisons evoke social undermining in more (but not less) competitive contexts. These findings reiterate the importance of a dynamic, temporal perspective for a complete understanding of social comparison processes.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)314-319
Number of pages6
JournalSocial Psychology
Volume52
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2021

Keywords

  • social comparison
  • social undermining
  • replication
  • SELF

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