Emotional and Behavioral Responses of Online Social Comparison among Young Adults

Abstract

Due of the surge in social comparison on social networking sites, academics have examined its impacts, but psychological aspects were emphasized (e.g., well-being). To extend prior research, this study evaluated young adults' behavioral and emotional responses to online social comparison. Social comparison on online sites had a predicted association with social comparison-based emotions and behavioral responses such as malicious comments, benevolent comments, and site discontinuation intention. The study was quantitative correlational, included 308 young Pakistani Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter users. A Non-probability convenient sampling technique was used to recruit participants through social media. Five self-report measures were used to collect data: social comparison (Steers et al., 2014), social comparison-based emotions (Park & Baek, 2018), posting malicious comments (Doane et al., 2013), intention to post benevolent comments (Jang et al., 2016), and intention to discontinue (Wirth et al., 2015). Repeated measure ANOVA analysis revealed that, Upward social comparison and upward assimilative emotions had a negative correlation, while with downward contrastive and assimilative emotions, it had a positive correlation. Downward social comparison was negatively associated with upward contrastive emotions, downward assimilative emotions, social networking discontinuation intention, and the publishing of malicious comments. Moreover, significant differences between men and women were also observed among the study variables. This study revealed how online social comparison affects behavior and emotions.