Social Comparison and Competition

Abstract Scholarship in psychology and related fields has been paying increasing attention in recent decades to the ways in which social comparison processes facilitate competitive attitudes, feelings, and behavior. As part of this development, we first advanced the Social Comparison Model of Competition (Garcia et al., 2013) —a general framework that accounted for the role of both individual and situational factors in this area—and later followed it with the more comprehensive, dynamic Social Comparison Cycle of Competition (Garcia, Reese, et al., 2020). At the same time, researchers have also proposed a number of more focused models to account for specific competitive relationships (e.g., rivalry), contexts (e.g., coaction), and more. In light of these important developments, this chapter briefly reviews the key takeaways from our general frameworks of social comparison and competition, demonstrates the insights offered by recognizing how those more specific models in this area fit into their general frameworks, and illustrates the continued utility of these general frameworks for the study of emerging phenomena, such as social networks or sustainability, from the perspective of social comparison and competition.