Call for papers
Special issue on the social comparison process
Social comparison is a fundamental human process
by which people create meaning about social reality.
Social comparison is central to many basic questions
that people confront in and around organizations. For
instance, how does the breast cancer patient know how
well she is progressing relative to other patients? How
does the young manager assess his or her recent pay
raise? How do we assess our past or future performance?
How do we attach meaning to levels of stress, pleasure,
or pain? How do social comparisons contribute to
evaluations of self-esteem now and in the future?
Since the seminal work by Festinger in 1954, research
on social comparison processes has appeared in several
domains. The dominant literature, in terms of number
of studies and cumulative focus, comes from social
psychology. Other research contributing to our knowl-
edge of social comparison processes appears in the or-
ganizational behavior and judgment literatures.
Collectively, these literatures fall within the domain of
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,
which makes the journal an appropriate outlet for in-
tegrating and advancing research on social comparison.
Goal
The goal of this special issue is to create new theo-
retical and empirical understandings about social com-
parison processes. Specifically, we want to identify gaps
in this literature and make progress toward filling those
gaps. In addition, we want to focus on social comparison
processes in some organizational or social setting. Social
comparison does not occur in the abstract; it is a process
that both affects and is affected by social settings.
Focus
We invite papers that will chart out and develop new
areas for understanding social comparison processes.
Below we list some opportunity areas. The key idea is to
submit papers that address gaps in the social compari-
son literature. Some gaps include:
1. Initiation. We know very little about what prompts
people to conduct social comparisons in natural
settings. What are the key stimuli? What is the role
of external organizational causes versus causes within
the person? How often do people engage in social
comparison? What methods can we use to capture
its initiation?
2. Selection of referents. Some of the social psychologi-
cal literature has delved deeply into this theme. How-
ever, more work is needed on different types of
referents
—
not just relying on ‘‘other’’ referents. Some
referents are embedded in contractual understand-
ings. This idea appears in the literature on psycholog-
ical contracts, but the social comparison lens is not
very explicit in that literature. There has been little
exploration of the diversity of referents people will
use. Do different organizational or social settings
evoke different classes of referents?
3. Evaluation. Much more work is needed in delineating
the process by which information about referents
combines to create meaning about the evaluation of
an object (e.g., pay or well-being). How do people
process information on multiple referents? How do
people manage conflicting information yielded by dif-
ferent comparisons? How can we better specify the
dynamic aspect of the process? Temporal issues do
not play a major role in the current literature, but
are likely to be important.
4. Objects of social comparison. Currently, much of the
literature focuses on affective dimensions (e.g., satis-
faction, well-being). In health-related studies, there
is a focus on health coping behaviors, but these also
are tied to affective states. What if we switched to
different settings, such as how people learn? How
do people assess their rate of learning? What is
the role of the social comparison process in how
people develop normative beliefs or embrace certain
cultural values? How do people assess complex so-
cial issues such as the speed of organizational
change? The key idea is to focus on new objects
for social comparison processes and understanding
how features of these objects affect social compari-
son.
doi:10.1016/S0749-5978(05)00053-1
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 97 (2005) 90–91
ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR
AND HUMAN
DECISION PROCESSES
www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp