Individuals Suffering from Social Comparison
The group is suffering from the Social comparison. My reasoning came from reading a Journal of managerial issue called Psychological influences of referent choice. According to (Lamertz, 2002) he stated:”The nature of contemporary work environment, ones characterized by instability and uncertainty, may create increased needs on the part of individuals for comparative information.” Also individuals use social comparison for managing both uncertainty and environmental change, and for making critical decisions about one job ( Van den Bos, 2001). There are several types of referents (Goodman, 1974) classified the primary comparison target groups: comparison s involving oneself (self referents), comparisons involving other individuals (Other-referents), and comparison involving employee and the organization (system-referent). Our group falls in this category system-referent. Much research has demonstrated that workers are influences by and behave differently as a result of social comparisons with varies targets. This was proposed that referent choices were influenced by judgments of similarity, attractiveness and usefulness, and determinations of referent relevance as a mediator prior to referent selection (Lind 2001). However, much has shown how individuals choose among these referents for comparison activities (O’neill & Mone, 2005). So the CEO has to give the employees an environment that allows them to generate the outcome that he is wanting.
A way to avoid Social Comparison is not as simply as the statement itself. As Leon Festinger stated “People have a natural tendency to evaluate their opinions and abilities (hypothesis 1).” However, not being able to avoid social comparison does not restrain us from carefully analyzing positive versus negative comparisons.
My hypothesis is not ruling out Social Comparison, but carefully choosing positive over negative (find your rabbit syndrome). This simply means carefully evaluating people and/or person
A way to avoid Social Comparison is not as simply as the statement itself. As Leon Festinger stated “People have a natural tendency to evaluate their opinions and abilities (hypothesis 1).” However, not being able to avoid social comparison does not restrain us from carefully analyzing positive versus negative comparisons.
My hypothesis is not ruling out Social Comparison, but carefully choosing positive over negative (find your rabbit syndrome). This simply means carefully evaluating people and/or person
References: Goodman, P.S., 1977 Social Comparison Processes in organizations. Chicago, il: St. Clair Press 97-132 Lin, E.A.,& Kray, L & Thompson, L 2001. “Primacy effects in justice jugments: Testing predictions from fairness heuristic theory.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decisaion Processes 85 2: 189-210 Oneill,B. & Mone,M., 2005 Journal of managerial issues Vol XVII Number 3 Fall 2005: 273-292, Psychological Influences on Referent Choice. Van den Bos,K. 2001, “Uncertainty Management: The Influence of Uncertainty Salience on Reactions to Percieved Procedural Fairness.” Journal of Personaility and Social Psychology 80 (6): 931-941. Plous, S. 1993