Compensating for failure through social comparison

Three studies tested the hypothesis that the motive to compensate-to cast f avorable light on the self after a threat to self-esteem-can lead people to seek social comparisons. Participants were high self-esteem undergraduates . In Experiment I, participants who had failed sought more comparisons when they were allowed to compare on their strangest attributes than when they were allowed to compare on their weakest attributes. In Experiment 2, parti cipants had a choice between comparing on a coparticipant's "superior" or " average" dimension. Success participants selected the other's strength for comparison, whereas failure participants selected the other's relative weak ness. In Experiment 3, failure participants were less likely to seek compar isons if they had already compensated via a self-affirmation task. These st udies employed novel or rarely used measures of social comparison, and the results have implications for both the social comparison and self-esteem li teratures.