New directions in social comparison research

This article notices that social comparison theory has developed from being a focused theoretical statement on the use of others for self-evaluation i nto a lively and varied area of research encompassing many different paradi gms, approaches and applications. A recent 'renaissance' in social comparis on theory is described in which links were established with social comparis on work from before Festinger's (1954) classic paper and in which various n ew methods and theoretical models were developed. More recently, an 'enligh tment' of social comparison theory seems to occur in which an integrative e ffort is made to link social comparison processes to more general principle s that underlie our Psychological functioning. Four trends in this enlightm ent are described: (1) the movement of social cognition to the centre stage of social comparison research; (2) the interest in more biological perspec tives, including evolutionary theory; (3) the focus on the role of individu al differences such as social comparison orientation (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999 ) in moderating the responses to social comparison; and (4) an emphasis on the social context of social comparisons, in particular the influence of so cial groups and social identity. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley, & Sons, Ltd .