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Asymmetric Social Comparison and Life Satisfaction in Social Networks

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Abstract

The aim of this study is to understand the effect of asymmetric social comparison on subjective well-being, and how it differs due to reciprocity. Our approach considers the social network of individuals as a local reference group. We tested competing hypotheses on negative and positive effects of comparison with worse-off (downward) and better-off (upward) targets with a representative sample of 1596 Chileans over the age of 18. The findings support that life satisfaction is influenced by social comparison. By considering the social network as a reference group, the positive effect of downward comparison and the negative effect of upward comparison are confirmed. Upward comparison seems to be more substantial than downward comparison. Additionally, the positive effect of downward comparison decreases slightly with a reciprocal exchange of support between respondents and targets. The application of social network analysis opens a path to understanding the mechanisms underlying social comparison processes.

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Fig. 1

Note: The path from reciprocity to SWL is included in the empirical models, but it is not part of the hypotheses

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Notes

  1. The literature in social networks refers to respondents as egos and targets as alters. For the sake of simplicity, we use a general terminology commonly used in social comparison research.

  2. Listwise deletion is a common practice for handling missing data in happiness studies (e.g. Cohen 2002; Steele and Lynch 2013; Yang 2008). It is recommended when incomplete information is missing at random (Allison 2000). As we can see in Table S1 in Supplementary material I, no serious problems of missing data were detected, and the main statistics did not change substantively after this list wise deletion. Therefore, we could assume randomness.

  3. According to Miller et al. (2015), some respondents may fill out name generators with just a few strong ties while others with mere acquaintances. Thus, the definition of up to five targets ensures a standardized set of “close ties" across respondents. Indeed, a limit of three targets is a common practice in name generator research (Miller et al. 2015). From the fully restricted sample, the most frequent network size is one acquaintance (34.6%).

  4. Past research has discussed the vulnerability of name generators to “interviewer effect” where characteristics of interviewers could affect responses (e.g. Marsden 2003; Eagle and Proeschold-Bell 2015). For this survey, in the case of the network size, the intraclass correlation (ICC) was 0.28, which means that 28% of the variance in the network size could be attributed to interviewers’ characteristics. Similar studies conducted with CAPI mode have found similar or higher ICC. Josten and Trappmann (2016) found an ICC of 0.30 in German panel survey “Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS) and Brüdel et al. (2013) an ICC of up to 0.40 for the second wave of German Socioeconomic Panel. This level of ICC is explained by the difficulty of supervision in applications of CAPI surveys. For the case of the Happiness Barometer, CAPI mode was the only alternative available for conducting a survey of a representative sample of a whole developing country.

  5. Correlations are reported in Table S3 in the Supplementary material. In general, low levels of correlation are reported. Downward and Upward comparison report a higher level of correlation, which could produce multicollinearity in the regression. However, this bias only could affect standard errors and not coefficients. Indeed, although there is a level of correlation, the coefficients of both variables are still significant. Therefore, it provides robustness to our estimations.

  6. We thank one of the reviewers for pointing out the relevance of this distinction for our conclusions.

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to Minhui Liu, Alexis Sossa, Chen Chen, Marcelo Marzouka, the editor and the five anonymous reviewers whose feedback strengthened this article immensely. Francisco Olivos disclosed receipt of the following financial support: Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme and Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion – COES (Fondap Project Number 15130009).

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  1. The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Sociology, Hong Kong, China

    Francisco Olivos

  2. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain

    Pablo Olivos-Jara

  3. Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Peñalolén, Chile

    Magdalena Browne

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Olivos, F., Olivos-Jara, P. & Browne, M. Asymmetric Social Comparison and Life Satisfaction in Social Networks. J Happiness Stud 22, 363–384 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00234-8

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