Dimensional and social comparisons in a health fitness context

AbstractWhereas prior research has found that people are influenced by both internal (e.g., dimensional) and external (e.g., social) comparative information inacademic contexts, we experimentally examined the influence of such comparisons in ahealth fitness context. Participants engaged in “physical and mental fitness” tasks (e.g., performing sit-ups, memorizing words) and were randomly assigned to receive (1) social comparative feedback indicating their physical or mental fitness was better or worse than their peers or (2) dimensional comparative feedback indicating their perform ance in a target domain (e.g., mental fitness) was better or worse than a referent domain (e.g., physical fitness). Results showed that participants who made upward comparisons had lower fitness self-evaluations and more negative (less positive) emotional reactions to the feedback for the target dom ain, with the effect being nominally stronger for social than dimensional comparisons and for mental than physical fitness. Findings are discussed in the context of comparison-based models and health behavior theories.

Source: Journal of Behavioral Medicine - May 27, 2023 Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research