AUTHOR=Colpaert Lucie , Muller Dominique , Fayant Marie-Pierre , Butera Fabrizio 

TITLE=A mindset of competition versus cooperation moderates the impact of social comparison on self-evaluation

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=6

YEAR=2015

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01337

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01337

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Do people feel better or worse about themselves when working with someone who is better than they are? We present the first replication of the work of <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B37">Stapel and Koomen (2005)</xref>, who showed that being in a competitive vs. cooperative mindset moderates the effects of social comparison on self-evaluation. In Experiment 1, we present a close replication of <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B37">Stapel and Koomen (2005</xref>, Study 2). Participants in competition/cooperation had to self-evaluate after receiving information about the personal characteristics of an upward/downward comparison target. In Experiment 2, we went further by providing feedback about both the comparison target and the self. Our results and a small-scale meta-analysis combining our experiments and <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B37">Stapel and Koomen’s (2005)</xref> confirm that a competitive/cooperative mindset moderates the impact of social comparison on self-evaluation; nevertheless, the effect size we found across the two experiments is clearly more modest than the one found in <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B37">Stapel and Koomen’s (2005)</xref> work.</p>