Explain how you might mitigate or resist the deleterious impact of social comparison as discussed. Support your response with references to social psychology theory and research.
Arson, et al. (2019), defines self-concept as who a person believes that they are based on their personal attributes. We live in a world now where everything is instantly and/or easily available. This is both a blessing a curse. We have easier access to information and convenience, but we also have instant access to other people’s lives. The bad part about that is that on social media wea re only seeing someone’s best self. So, we are now not only comparing ourselves to celebrities, but we are not also comparing ourselves to the “perfect” ideal parent or spouse or person that is portrayed online. We compare ourselves to these images and snippets of someone’s life that they decided to share, and that impacts how we see ourselves. Now, we are comparing person A to ourselves and feeling bad that we have not achieved what they have or we did not lose as much weight as they did. Comparison is unhealthy and it leads to false self-concepts that can really harm a person both physical and mentally. Riyanto and Zhang (2016) stated that there is a lot of research in social psychology that we develop our self-concept based on what we think others’ think of us. Therefore, if we are comparing ourselves to the model that everyone thinks is gorgeous and that is not how we look, then we assume that others think we are not attractive. There is a big influence on our self-concept that is contingent on where we are from. The textbook gives us the example of the Crown Princess Japan who made the decision to follow tradition and give up her independence instead of modernizing things and chasing her own career. (Aronson, et al., 2019) People had varying views on this topic, but many believed that her choice to marry the prince was based on how she saw herself. It seems to me that she may have seen herself as a more traditional person who wanted to revolve her life around family and honoring her husband and others in that way.
