Social Comparison

Henry,

Reading about the universality of inferiority feelings caused me to wonder if you were familiar with the concept of 'downward social comparison'--a topic of s interest now among academic social psychologists such as Tom Wills. One of the implications of the theory is that people like bad news (as in TV news) because it improves their own self-assessment by comparison with the worse circumstances of others.

Gil

Replies:

Depreciation, Idealization, & Solicitude, by Henry Stein, 4/13/96 Adler and Social Comparison, by Gil Levin, 4/13/96

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