Individual Differences in Social Comparison and its Consequences for Life Satisfaction: Introducing a Short Scale of the Iowa–Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure

Simone Schneider () and Jürgen Schupp

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2014, vol. 115, issue 2, 767-789

Abstract: Research in social psychology has shown individual variation in the tendency to compare one’s own opinions and abilities with those of other people, raising the question of whether social comparisons are psychological dispositions. To test the empirical validity of this proposition, Gibbons and Buunk ( 1999 ) created an instrument, the Iowa–Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM), that measures the tendency to engage in social comparison and captures central aspects of the self and the other. This paper analyzes the reliability and validity of the INCOM scale for the German population and discusses potentials for shortening the instrument for continued use in large-scale population surveys. Interdependencies between psychological and structural characteristics are investigated and consequences for life satisfaction discussed. The results show evidence that individuals systematically vary in their orientation towards social comparison. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Social comparisons; Relative deprivation; Life satisfaction; Validity tests; SOEP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-012-0227-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:115:y:2014:i:2:p:767-789

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-012-0227-1

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().