Inspired to Perspire: The Interplay of Social Comparison Direction and Standard Extremity in the Context of Challenging Exercising Goals

Abstract

People pursue challenging health goals, often with uncertain success. In this article, we combined a social-cognitive framework of social comparison with motivational principles in self-regulation to investigate how salient social comparison standards impact motivation toward exercising goals. Across three studies, we systematically expose participants to one of four comparison standards varying in comparison direction (upward vs. downward) and standard extremity (moderate vs. extreme). We consistently find that moderately upward standards result in a motivational boost and that extreme downward comparison standards have no motivational potential. However, there was also some evidence, although less consistently, for a motivating effect of moderate downward standards (Studies 1 and 2), suggesting a preventive or competitive demarcation effect, and for extreme upward standards, suggesting overconfidence (Study 3). From a theoretical perspective, our findings suggest that contemporary information-processing models of social comparison (assimilation and contrast) may not be fully adequate to also cover the motivational consequences.