The deleterious impact of social comparison

by | Mar 17, 2022 | principles ofmanagement

 

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.

 

Sample solution

Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.


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God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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