(How Much) Do Temporal Social Comparisons Matter?

Abstract

Abstract. Moving beyond static perspectives in social comparison theory, Reh and colleagues (2018) provided initial evidence for the relevance of “temporal social comparisons” (i.e., comparing one’s own with others’ past development over time on a salient dimension). Although this research has received wide attention, the study illustrating the authors’ basic rationale (Study 1a) suffered from a small sample size, and its results did not reach conventional significance levels. Thus, we provide a direct, preregistered, and high-powered replication of this study. Our results corroborate the original conclusions, indicating that unfavorable temporal social comparisons evoke social undermining in more (but not less) competitive contexts. These findings reiterate the importance of a dynamic, temporal perspective for a complete understanding of social comparison processes.