Social comparison
Envy, Schadenfreude, and Social Comparison
This is part one of a multi part post on the subject. I have posted links to the subsequent parts below.
‘Do you not think,’ said he, ‘it is matter for sorrow that while Alexander1, at my age, was already king of so many peoples, I have as yet achieved no brilliant success?2
Julius Caesar
Despite his own significant accomplishments, Caesar felt inferior to another great leader before him: Alexander the Great.
Turns out, in Shakespeare’s version of the story, Caesar himself was a victim of this kind of social comparison. Caesar had a friend named Cassius, who knew him since childhood. In a story he relates to Brutus, Cassius recalls a windy day when he and Caesar stood on the banks of the Tiber River, where Caesar dared him to swim to a distant point. They raced through the water, but Caesar became weak and asked Cassius to save him from drowning, and so, Cassius had to drag him from the water. Cassius also recounted an episode when Caesar had a fever in Spain and experienced a seizure.
So for a long time, Cassius felt superior to Caesar. Then Caesar became the leader of Rome and was loved by the masses… and Cassius envied him for this. This led Cassius to facilitate events which eventually led to Caesar’s assassination.
How ironic! Caesar felt he had not ascended high enough... And then ends up being killed because others thought he had ascended too high!
This story highlights Social comparison theory in action - that is, the idea that individuals determine their own social and personal worth based on how they stack up against others, especially when it comes to social status3 (FYI: My previous posts here and here).
Those of you who have followed my Instagram posts over the years will know, I repeatedly talk about how comparison is a fool’s errand.
Live and let live - never forget that you really have no clue what another person is going through, and what circumstances led them to have the life which you observe a mere fraction of. Focus on what you have, and not what others have in addition to you. Focus on where you started, and how far ahead you are, of where you thought you would be a decade ago.
Here’s a paper which points out considerations in the social comparison scale - things like: “I compare myself to others regarding what I have accomplished in life” and “I compare how I am doing socially (fame, acceptance within my social network etc) to others.” By definition, social comparison is a relative concept (‘comparison', after all, must be with something else!).
This paper explains how people care more about their relative position in domains where they have to engage in social comparison to evaluate outcomes. It also explains how people adopt a competitive mindset which makes them want to be better off than others in society.
Consider two options - where the starting salary is 75k pa, and both you and your colleague are getting pay rises: