reactions to others' outcomes depends on their distance

Running head: BETTER OFF AND FAR AWAY

Better Off and Far Away:

Reactions to Others’ Outcomes Depends on Their Distance

Daniel A. Yudkin1, Nira Liberman2, Cheryl Wakslak3, and Yaacov Trope1

Author Note

This work was supported by NSF grants BCS-1053128 and BCS-1349054 awarded to Yaacov

Trope and Cheryl Wakslak.

Correspondence should be addressed to: Daniel A. Yudkin at the Department of

Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Solomon Laboratories

3720 Walnut Street, Office C23, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6241. E-mail: [email protected].

The authors would like to thank Emily Buddeke, Ya Hui Chang, Irene Droney, Yewon Hur, Max

Mundy, Vani Kilakkathi, and Leigh Smith.

1 University of Pennsylvania2 Tel Aviv University33 University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business1

BETTER OFF AND FAR AWAY



WORD COUNT (Including Abstract, Figures, and References): 13,173

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Abstract

Research shows that people’s satisfaction with outcomes they receive (e.g., a prize) is

influenced by their standing relative to targets of comparison. Here we asked whether the

similarity of the comparison target impacts which features of outcomes people pay attention to.

This is particularly important in situations in which more than one outcome feature may drive

people’s sense of relative deprivation. Drawing on Construal Level Theory, which contends that

people use high level construals to transcend psychological distance, we show that comparing to

more dissimilar targets increases the salience of high- versus low-level features of outcomes.

Experiment 1 demonstrates that people seek out high-level information when they believe they

are comparing to psychologically distant others. Experiments 2-4 show that high-level

information, relative to low-level information, exerts greater weight on satisfaction when the

comparison target is far versus near. Experiment 5 shows these effects can be explained by

variations in construal level. Overall, this research highlights the importance of distant others in

influencing people’s sense of relative deprivation.

Keywords: social comparison, construal level, relative deprivation

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Maybe you started to compareTo someone not there.

— The Fray

People have an intrinsic drive to know how well they are faring in the world, and one of

the most frequent ways they do this is by comparing themselves to others (Festinger, 1954).

Research on relative deprivation highlights the sense of grievance or dissatisfaction that arises

when people compare themselves to those who are better off (Crosby, 1976; Stouffer, Suchman,

DeVinney, Star, & Williams, 1949). This research suggests that people’s satisfaction with

outcomes they receive (e.g., job promotions, salaries, etc.) fluctuates according to whom they

compare (Brickman & Bulman, 1977; Deiner & Oishi, 2000; Major, 1994; Sweeney & McFarlin,

2004; Yngwe, Fritzell, Lundberg, Diderichson, 2003). For instance, someone in a relatively

affluent comparison group may feel dissatisfied with her income, even if, objectively speaking,

she is well-off. Relative deprivation has been implicated in a broad variety of outcomes, from

life satisfaction to intergroup hostility (Crosby, 1976; Easterlin, 1995; Smith, Pettigrew, Pippin,

& Bialosiewicz, 2012; Walker & Pettigrew, 1984).

One issue at the fore of research on the phenomenon of relative deprivation concerns the

question of whom people select as their target of comparison. Historically, people often were

primarily exposed to people in their local social environment, and that group became their main

comparison group (Stouffer, Suchman, DeVinney, Star, & Williams, 1949; Runciman, 1966).

Moreover, past research suggests that, when provided with options, comparers preferentially

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select, and are subsequently more influenced by, close versus distant others (Atkinson, 1986;

Darley & Aronson, 1966; Hakmiller, 1966; Mayseless & Kruglanski, 1987; Zell & Alicke, 2010;

2013; Zell, Strickhauser, & Alicke, 2017). Overall, this research lends credence to Festinger’s

(1954) claim that “Given a range of possible persons for comparison, someone close to one’s

own ability or opinion will be chosen for comparison” (though see Goethals & Reckman, 1973;

Tropp & Wright, 1999; Wolf et al., 2010 for important exceptions to this claim).

But while psychological research makes clear that would-be comparers tend to be

disproportionately impacted by proximal others, other work suggests that people are regularly

exposed to individuals with very different backgrounds and points of view (e.g., Gilbert, Geisler,

& Morris, 1995; Sweeney & McFarlin, 2005). This is particularly the case in today’s age of

boundary-blurring social technology, which renders interactions with dissimilar others accessible

through a few clicks on a computer screen. As a result, the ability to extend one’s range of

comparison beyond one’s immediate social circle may serve a variety of adaptive goals

(Gorenflo & Crano, 1989; Kruglanski & Mayseless, 1987, Kruglanski & Mayseless, 1990),

including affording people the opportunity to expand their understanding of what is possible in

society. Moreover, although people may overall prefer to compare themselves with similar

others, this does not suggest they will never use a more distant referent. In other words,

regardless of whether people do or do not preferentially select similar others for comparison, it is

important to ascertain whether, when they do compare to more distant others, this changes the

nature of the comparison itself.

In this research, we address the question of whether the experience of relative deprivation

changes according to the distance of the comparison target. To address this question, we build on

Construal Level Theory (CLT), which describes how people represent distant times and places,

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hypothetical scenarios, and socially distant others (Liberman & Trope, 2014; Trope & Liberman,

2010). CLT suggests that people use mental abstraction to traverse various forms of

psychological distance, including temporal, spatial, social, and hypothetical distances. Any

object can be represented at different levels of abstraction, or construal. Low level construals are

concrete and unstructured, focusing on an object’s peripheral details. High level construals, by

contrast, are more abstract and schematic, focusing on an object’s central features. High level

construals are useful for traversing psychological distance because they emphasize objects’

superordinate features and omit specific aspects; as a result, they are more likely to remain

unchanged as one gets closer to an object or farther away from it. In this way, high level

construals help people to represent distant objects and events, and to regulate themselves towards

more distant goals. Consider someone intending to rent a car for a family vacation. When the

vacation is in the distant future, it is more useful for her to construe the vehicle as a “sedan”

rather than as a “Toyota Camry,” since, as the rental time approaches, the sedan is less likely

than the Camry to be subject to shifts in preference and availability. When she arrives at the

airport and must decipher how to navigate the rental car parking lot, on the other hand, low level

construals, which serve to deal effectively with the concrete challenges of the here-and-now,

become more useful.

The functional relation between distance and construal suggests that people may employ

higher level construals when comparing their outcomes to those of socially distant targets. This

idea is supported in past research, which suggests that people relate to distant others with a more

abstract mindset. For instance, when people are asked to predict someone’s behavior, they are

more likely to seek information about that person’s global dispositions (a higher level construal

attribute) when the behavior is to take place in the distant future as opposed to the near future

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(Nussbaum, Trope, & Liberman, 2003). Similar findings were obtained in research on social

distance, manipulated through similarity to the self. For example, Liviatan, Trope, and Liberman

(2008) asked people to consider an actor who was presented as socially similar (i.e., taking many

of the same college courses) or dissimilar (i.e., taking none of the same college courses). Results

indicated that people were more likely to describe the person’s behavior in high-level terms (e.g.,

locking a door as “securing the house”) than low-level terms (e.g., “putting a key in the lock”)

(Vallacher & Wegner, 1987) when the target was dissimilar versus similar. In addition,

Bruchmann and Evans (2012) found that people thinking abstractly are more likely to be

influenced by aggregate versus individual information. Similarly, other work in the domain of

social learning has shown that when people learn from targets that are socially or temporally

distance, they tend to emulate higher-level information (Kalkstein, Kleiman, Wakslak, Liberman,

& Trope, 2016). This research thus suggests a potential relationship between construal level and

how people are influenced by comparison information.

Relative Deprivation to Near versus Distant Others

In this research, we assess implications of these prior findings in the context of research

on relative deprivation. Instead of social distance merely making comparison targets less

impactful, as implied by previous research, we suggest that distance will change the

psychological weight given to different types of information. Namely, we expect that, as target

distance increases, people’s standing in high-level dimensions will be more impactful than in

low. We further predict this phenomenon will influence people’s satisfaction with outcomes they

receive. Specifically, because increases in target distance results in greater importance of high-

relative to low-level information, someone comparing to a distant target will be more affected by

their standing in high- versus low-level outcome features. This is not to imply that distant others

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will be more impactful than close. Instead, it claims that, if and when people do compare to more

distant others, high-level outcome features will weigh more heavily in their evaluative

calculations.

Overview of the Experiments

We first set out to explore a related preliminary question: whether people’s interest in

high- versus low-level comparison information increases with target distance (Experiment 1).

Then, in the subsequent three Experiments (2-4), we examine people’s satisfaction with

outcomes they receive. We expect that people’s satisfaction with their own outcomes will depend

on the comparative other’s distance, and that other’s relative standing on high or low-level

dimensions of the outcomes. Note that our primary interest is on the interactive impact of target

distance and standing on high or low-level dimensions, rather than the simple effect within

distance condition. Because no distance is objectively near or far, but rather only relatively so, it

is the relationship between construal level and target distance that is the primary focus of our

investigation. Our final study (Experiment 5) shows that similar effects can be obtained with

pure manipulations of construal level (as opposed to target distance), supporting our claims

regarding the underlying effect. We include a local meta-analysis to obtain more accurate

estimates of effect sizes.

Our strategy for determining sample size was as follows. When we did not know what

effect size to anticipate, we ran approximately 50 participants per cell (Experiments 2 and 3; see

Ledgerwood & Ratliff, 2015). When, on the basis of these findings and other pretests (posted

online at the Open Science Framework, osf.io/sfu6p), we had reason to expect a smaller or larger

effect size, we increased or decreased our sample size from that point of reference (Experiments

1, 4, and 5).

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Experiment 1: Seeking Information

As a preliminary test of our ideas, we wanted to show that people preferentially seek out

high level comparison information from psychologically distant targets. To accomplish this, we

ran an experiment in which we asked people a series of questions about themselves, and gave

them the opportunity to select information they wanted to know about another participant in

order to compare themselves to that person. We expected that people would be more likely to

seek out high-level information when they were comparing to a psychologically distant versus a

psychologically near other. To demonstrate that any effects were not merely a function of

presumed knowledge about the target, we varied the perceived distance of the target across

condition (by means of a point of reference manipulation, described below), keeping the actual

distance of the target constant. In this way, the high-level and low-level potential information

would objectively be equally meaningful across conditions.

Method

Participants. On the basis of pretesting and previous research, we expected a medium-

sized effect, and thus sought approximately 80 participants (Cohen’s f = .2, power = 80%

correlation among repeated measures r = .3). Six participants failed to complete the experiment,

leaving a total sample of seventy-four (31 men, 43 women, mean age 34.5 years, SD = 10.6).

Subjects were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to participate in a study entitled

“Compare Yourself” in exchange for $.40.

Materials and procedure. Participants were informed that they would be completing an

online survey and comparing their responses to a partner. They were then presented with the list

of possible partners, one of which would be “randomly” selected for them (in actuality the same

partner was always chosen by the computer, but the other partner options were varied across

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conditions to make the chosen partner seem relatively proximal or distal). In the near condition,

the given locations were listed as follows: “[same state as participant, ZIP + 834], distance ~100

miles,” “Mexico, distance >1,000 miles” “United Kingdom, distance >3,000 miles” and “India,

distance >10,000 miles away.” In the distant condition, the locations of the possible partners

were: “[participant’s ZIP], distance < 5 miles,” “[ZIP + 3], distance ~10 miles,” “[ZIP + 111],

distance ~50 miles,” “[same state as participant, ZIP + 834], distance ~100 miles.” Note that the

first and the last member of these lists, respectively, were identical: “[same state as participant,

ZIP + 834], distance ~100 miles.” This was the participant that was always “randomly” selected

to be the partner. We assumed that participants would consider the target as psychologically near

when it was presented in the context of more distant possibilities, and as distant when it was

considered within the context of more near possibilities (see Peetz, Wilson, & Strahan, 2009, and

Wakslak & Kim, 2015, for similar manipulations). In order to bolster this effect, we followed up

this manipulation with a scale which gave participants an opportunity to indicate how far away,

in miles they believed their partner to be. The range of the scale varied between conditions. In

the “Near” condition, the scale had a range of 0 to 10,000. In the “Far” condition, the scale had a

range of 0 to 100. As a result of these different ranges, participants in the “near” condition, in

indicating the actual distance of their partner, would answer at the bottom end of the scale, thus

enforcing the concept that the partner was relatively proximal; by contrast, participants in the

“far” condition would at the top end of the scale, thereby enforcing the concept that the partner

was relatively far away, even though the actual partner distance was the same. Following the

selection process, in order to test and verify this assumption, participants stated how many miles

they believed their partner to be (7-point scale; Extremely close to Extremely far).

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Next, participants responded to a series of eight question pairs, each containing a “low-

level” and a “high-level question” (see Supplementary Materials, p. 1). While questions are not

themselves inherently low- or high-level, the concreteness versus abstractness of the question

can be manipulated so as to evoke low- or high-level construals in perceivers, respectively.

“Low-level” questions referenced concrete or incidental features of an overarching category;

“high-level” questions referenced more abstract or central features of that category. For instance,

in the “job” question section, participants responded to the question “How good were the perks

(time off, travel, etc.) at your most recent job?” (low level) and “How much overall satisfaction

did you get from your most recent job” (high level). Directly following each question pair,

participants were told, “You now have the choice of comparing your responses to these questions

to those of your partner,” and were asked to choose which of their partner’s responses they

would like to see (“I would prefer to see my partner’s responses to the ____ question.”). This

was the “binary choice.” On the following screen, they then rated how interested they would be

in each individual item of the question pair (0=Not at all interested; 100=Extremely interested).

This was the “continuous response.” Following this, they were debriefed about the nature of the

experiment, and thanked and paid for their participation.

Results

As expected, participants in the near condition rated their target as significantly closer to

them (M = 3.25, SD = 1.48) than participants in the distant condition (M = 4.73, SD = 1.13, t(70)

= -4.79, p < .001). As a preliminary test of the hypothesis, we performed a mixed-model

ANOVA with condition (near versus distant) as the between-subjects factor, and question pair (8

items, continuous response) and construal level (high versus low) as the within-subjects factors.

The results demonstrated a significant interaction of level and condition, F(1, 69) = 10.05, p

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= .002, μp2 = .13 (see Figure 1). The three-way interaction between level, condition, and question

was not significant, p = .89, suggesting the level-by-condition effect did not differ across the

question pairs.

To examine simple effects, we collapsed across the continuous response measures to

create an overall measure of interest in high-level and low-level comparison information. Results

showed that while there was little difference according to target distance in participants’ interest

in comparing high-level information, p = .879, differences in perceived distance did affect

participants’ interest in low-level information, with significantly less interest in low-level

information when comparing to distant (M = 44.8, SD = 16.9, 95% C.I. [38.6, 51.0]) as opposed

to near (M = 54.5, SD = 22.2, 95% C.I. [47.6, 61.4]) targets, F(1, 69) = 4.37, p = .040, d = .49.

To corroborate these results, we examined the binary choices of question topic by

assigning point values to the choices (1 = low level selection; 2 = high level selection) and then

simply calculating an overall mean selection score for each participant. Thus a score of 16 would

imply that the participant chose to see only the high-level information, and a score of 8 would

imply that the participant had chosen to see only low-level information. A t-test comparing

participants scores in the low- versus high-level conditions showed that participants in the near

condition were significantly more likely to select to see low-level information (M = 12.6, SD =

1.43) than those in the distant condition (M = 13.4, SD = 1.46), t(74) = -2.30, p = .022, d = .53).

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Close Far0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Question type

Low-Level

High-Level

Perceived Partner Distance

Inte

rest

in

co

mp

arin

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Figure 1. Interest in comparing low- versus high-level information according to partner distance and question type.

Discussion

In this experiment, we sought to test whether people’s interest in information would vary

according to the perceived physical distance of the person they were seeking information about.

We found that the mere perception that the target was farther away led to an increase in people’s

interest in high-level information relative to low level information. This corroborates our

hypothesis that people increasingly rely on high-level construal information when comparing

with more distant others. Moreover, the pattern of results constitutes the first evidence of our

hypothesis that, while low-level information may diminish in importance as the distance of the

comparison target increases, high-level information remains relevant even at increased distance.

Critically, we observed these findings even when the actual distance of the comparison target

was held constant, and only the perceived target distance was altered via the context in which it

was presented.

Experiment 2: Comparing a DVD Prize

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The remaining experiments explore the consequences of target distance and construal

level for the experience of relative deprivation. Across all experiments, participants are presented

with a near or a distant comparison target. Furthermore, their relative standing in high- versus

low-level information is experimentally manipulated such that people are superior to the target in

high-level dimensions and inferior in low-level dimensions, or vice versa. This design enabled us

to directly examine the evaluative consequences of being inferior on different dimensions of an

outcome when the comparison target was near or distant. Based on work in relative deprivation

theory (Crosby, 1976; Smith, Pettigrew, Pippin, & Bialosiewicz, 2012) which examines the

causes and consequences of grievance as a measure of justice-related affect, we focused on

people’s dissatisfaction with their outcome as the primary dependent variable. We suggest that

people’s dissatisfaction will be influenced by an interaction of target distance and relative

outcome such that receiving a prize that is inferior in high- (relative to low-) level dimensions

will result in more dissatisfaction as target distance increases.

In Experiment 2, we tested people’ dissatisfaction with a DVD prize they had been given

the chance to win in compensation for their participation in an online experiment. Participants

recruited from an online platform were “randomly” paired with a comparison target who was

either close or distant. As compensation for an earlier part of the experiment, they learned that

they would be given the opportunity to win a DVD prize. They were given the opportunity to

compare this prize to that of their partner. Then they were asked how satisfied they were to have

been given the DVD prize that they had, in comparison to their partner’s prize. Of course, there

are many more important things in life that are subject to relative deprivation than DVDs.

However, we suggest that this makes the test of the hypothesis no less meaningful, since

differences in satisfaction in seemingly trivial categories would likely translate to even more

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significant differences in substantive ones.

In order to test the impact of high- versus low-level information on relative deprivation,

we manipulated participants’ standing on both high- and low-level attributes of the DVD prize

itself. Past research in construal level theory suggests that high- and low-level features can be

reflected in the desirability and the feasibility, respectively, of a goal. Desirability reflects the

value of an action’s end state, while feasibility reflects the ease or difficulty of achieving that end

state. Because a goal’s end state is its most central feature, desirability reflects the superordinate,

high-level features of that goal. Feasibility, by contrast, reflects the subordinate low-level

features of a goal (Liberman & Trope, 1998; Fujita et al., 2008). Accordingly, by manipulating

the feasibility and the desirability of the DVD, we were able to influence its attractiveness in

both high- and low-level dimensions. We manipulated the desirability of the DVD by its star

rating. Participants received a DVD that was rated either better or worse by other users than their

target. We manipulated the feasibility of the DVD by its delivery time. Participants learned that

they would receive their DVD in either a shorter or longer time than their comparison target (see

Supplementary Materials, p. 2).

Because we wanted to ensure that our manipulation of distance was strong enough to

impact satisfaction, we used a multi-pronged approach to manipulate psychological distance.

First, we asked participants to fill out a personality questionnaire. We then told them that they

had a high or a low match with their partner. This sort of interpersonal similarity manipulation

has been used to effect a feeling of psychological distance in the past (Liviatan, Trope, &

Liberman, 2008). In addition, participants in the near condition were told that they were

physically close to the comparison target and those in the distant condition were told they were

physically far away. We predicted that participants comparing to a distal target would give more

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weight to their standing on desirability (relative to feasibility) dimensions, resulting in an

interaction between relative standing and target distance on dissatisfaction. In this way, people’s

relative deprivation would be modulated both by the distance of the comparison target and their

standing in low- versus high-level dimensions of the DVD.

Method

Participants and design. We aimed to recruited two hundred US participants from

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (estimated effect size: Cohen’s f = .2, power 80%) to complete an

online study entitled “Who Do You Think You Are?” in exchange for 30¢ and a chance to win a

DVD. Six participants did not give their consent to use their data, leaving one hundred and

ninety-four participants (102 female, 92 male, mean age 33.2 years, SD = 12.2). (Participants

actually had a 1/100 chance of winning a $10 cash prize, which they could use to purchase a

DVD of their choice).

Materials and procedure. After filling out basic demographic information, participants

were told that they would be logged on to an online server in which they would be given the

opportunity to interact with another worker. In reality, the forum was pre-coded to give the

appearance of a genuine interaction. Participants waited a minute for the server to load, were told

that they had been assigned the handle “User 2” and were then shown a screen which read

“Interaction Forum [date]” and “Computer moderator: User 1 has entered the chat room.”

Target proximity. Participants in the proximal target condition learned that their partner

was located in a physically proximal area to them (ZIP code + 10, text displayed: “Physical

distance between users: <50 miles”); those in the distal target condition learned that their partner

was in a physically distal area to them (location analysis ascertained whether they were located

in an eastern or western state; those in the west learned the target was located in Maine; those in

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the east that the target was located in Oregon; text displayed: “Physical distance between users,

>1500 miles.”). Partner gender (male) was kept constant across conditions. Next, the computer

moderator prompted participants to submit a greeting, and displayed a greeting from the target

(proximal condition: “Hello MTurker. Looks liek [sic] we’re basically neighbors..”; distal

condition: “Hello MTurker. How’s it goin?”). The computer moderator informed participants

that they would now be prompted to answer some questions about themselves in a short “getting

to know you” survey. What followed were ten binary choice personality questions that

participants responded to, after which there was a short randomized delay of approximately 5

seconds, after which both theirs and their partner’s answers were displayed on the interaction

screen. At the conclusion of the ten-item personality task, the computer moderator displayed,

“You and your partner have provided the same answer to 2 [9] out of 10 questions. (20% [90%]

match),” according to condition (near v. distant).

Outcome assignment. Participants learned that in exchange for their time, both they and

their partner would be given a 1/100 chance to win a DVD prize. They were then shown two

possible DVD’s, one that they would receive a chance to win, and the other that their partner

would receive a chance to win. One of the choices was the same across condition: a DVD that

had been rated 4 stars and would take approximately 2 weeks to arrive. The second choice varied

by condition, and was crafted to make the 4 star/2 week option seem less desirable by

comparison (but more feasible), or more desirable (but less feasible). In the longer wait

condition, the alternative DVD had been rated 3 stars and would take 1-2 business days to arrive.

In the fewer stars condition, the alternative DVD had been rated 5 stars and would take 4-6

weeks to arrive (see osf.io/sfu6p for materials used).

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Participants were then “randomly” assigned to receive the chance to win one of the two

DVDs; their partner was assigned to receive the chance to win the other. In both conditions,

participants were assigned the chance to win the 4-star, 2-week DVD. This DVD was of both

average desirability and average feasibility, which allowed us to ensure that any differences in

satisfaction were due entirely to the comparison and not to objective differences in participants’

own outcomes.

The partner was “randomly” assigned the chance to win the other DVD. In the longer

wait condition, the short delivery time of the counterfactual DVD meant that participants had to

wait longer for their DVD than their partner. In the fewer stars condition, the high star rating of

the counterfactual DVD meant that participants had a worse-rated DVD than their partner. In this

way, we manipulated participants’ relative standing on high- and low-level dimensions while

keeping their own outcome constant.

Measures. To assess people’s dissatisfaction with their DVD prize, we asked participants

nine questions pertaining to their evaluation of the prize: how happy, disappointed, satisfied,

excited, annoyed they feel about their prize (1 = Not at all to 7 = Very much), as well as whether

they felt they got the better or worse prize (1 = Definitely better to 5 = Definitely worse), how

fair it was to receive the prize they did (1 = Totally unfair to 5 = Totally fair), how they felt

about their prize overall, and how much they wished they received the other prize (1 = Not at all

to 5 = A great deal). We collapsed across these nine items, transforming and reverse-coding

where appropriate (Cronbach’s alpha = .86), to create an overall measure of dissatisfaction

ranging from 1 to 7. Finally, participants were informed of the nature of the experiment, given a

1/100 chance to win a $10 cash prize (DVD-equivalent), and thanked for their participation.

Results

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Suspicion checks. We had independent raters examine the responses participants gave to

their “partner” in the interaction forum for signs of suspicion. All participants (n = 194) gave

responses consistent with believing the interaction was real, with no one expressing any signs of

suspicion.

Outcome evaluation. We submitted the overall dissatisfaction measure to a 2 (relative

standing: longer weight versus fewer stars) x 2 (target distance: proximal versus distal) analysis

of variance (ANOVA). Analysis revealed a significant interaction between conditions, F(1, 183)

= 6.17, p = .014, μp2 = .033, (see Figure 2). While those who received a lower-rated DVD prize

were significantly more dissatisfied when the comparison target was far (M = 2.76, SD = .95,

95% C.I. [2.45, 3.03]) versus close (M = 2.38, SD = .94, 95% C.I. [2.15, 2.62]), F(1, 183) = 4.30,

p = .039, those who had to wait longer for the DVD were directionally, but not significantly,

more dissatisfied when the target was close (M = 2.32, SD = .69, 95% C.I. [2.08, 2.56]) versus

far (M = 2.08, SD = .76, 95% C.I. [1.84, 2.31]).

Close Far1

1.5

2

2.5

3

Compared to the target, participants received DVD with:

Longer wait time

Lower star rating

Comparison Target

Dis

sati

sfac

tio

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Figure 2. Mean dissatisfaction with DVD prize according to target distance and outcome.

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Discussion

Past research suggests that people have the tendency to contrast themselves with similar

others, particularly when the domain of comparison is relevant to them (Markman & McMullen,

2003; Mussweiler, 2003; Tesser & Campbell, 1982; Tesser, 1988). The current research shows

an important boundary condition to this claim. Here, the similarity (or “distance”) of the

comparison target modulated the importance of the effect of different outcome dimensions on

satisfaction. Specifically, when participants received a prize that was inferior in high-, relative to

low-level dimensions, they actually demonstrated more relative deprivation (as assessed through

dissatisfaction) when comparing to dissimilar versus similar others. This suggests that high-level

information may become emphasized when the comparison target is farther away.

Critically, these results emerged while holding constant the actual prize that participants

received. While participants always received the prize that was of average feasibility and

desirability, it was the comparison target’s prize that varied in these dimensions. This allowed us

to ensure that any effects we observed were the result of comparisons with the partner’s prize

rather than due to mere priming effects resulting from the manipulated distance of the

comparison target. The same method—holding participants’ prize constant to ensure any effects

are the direct result of comparison processes—will be used throughout the remainder of this

article.

In Experiment 3, we sought to conceptually replicate this pattern by varying distance in a

dimension that was not social distance. This is important because social distance is likely to be

related to target likeability, raising the possibility that the observed pattern of effects was the

result of people being most dissatisfied when they received an outcome that was inferior on an

important (high-level) dimension by a disliked other. Note that being inferior to close or liked

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others, as opposed to disliked others, in relevant dimensions, has been shown by past research to

result in greater relative deprivation (e.g., Tesser & Campbell, 1982; Tesser, 1988); but we

wanted to rule out this possibility regardless. Thus, we attempted, in the next experiment, to

manipulate target distance via temporal distance. Temporal distance has not been found in

previous research to be associated with feelings of similarity; consequently, we conducted

Experiment 3 in order to explore effects of psychological distance without the possibility that

similarity per se explained the effects.

Experiment 3: Comparing Raffle Prizes

Participants in Experiment 3 imagined that they had won a raffle prize and were told of

an alternative prize that a comparison target had won in a raffle that took place at the same time

(proximal condition), or had taken place in the past (distal condition). The prize was a gift

certificate to a restaurant. As in the previous experiment, this outcome varied in both high- and

low-level dimensions such that participants were either better-off in high-level or in low-level

attributes. Specifically, participants learned that while the gift certificate they received was

moderate on both high- and low-level dimensions (a decent restaurant with decent availability),

the gift certificate won by the comparison target was superior on either low-level (more

availability) or high-level (higher quality) dimensions. Once again, we predicted that people

would weigh high-level attributes more heavily when comparing to a distant than near target,

with corresponding effects on their sense of relative deprivation.

Method

Participants. We anticipated a smaller effect size than in Experiment 2 in view of the

possibility that the temporal distance manipulation we use here might be weaker than the layered

social distance manipulation used in Experiment 2 (Trope & Liberman, 2003). Accordingly, we

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recruited 275 US citizens (102 male, 173 female, mean age 34.3 years, SD = 11.5) through

Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (estimated effect size: Cohen’s f = .16, power 80%) in exchange for

$.10.

Materials and procedure. All participants were asked to imagine that they had

entered a raffle as part of an effort to raise money for a local museum, and won a prize: a

gift certificate to a decent restaurant in town, valid any Thursday. They then learned about

someone who won a different prize in a raffle to raise money for the museum. The person

won this prize either many years ago (i.e., in a former raffle fundraiser for the museum) or

in the present day (in the same raffle fundraiser). Furthermore, this comparison prize varied

in both quality and availability, such that it was either better in quality (a meal at the highest

Michelin-rated restaurant in the area) but worse on availability (valid only a single day per

month), or worse in quality (a meal at a local diner) but better on availability (valid any day

of the week) (see Supplementary Materials, p. 3). Participants were then asked the series of

questions about their satisfaction with their own outcome identical to those presented in

Experiment 2.

Results

Likability Pretest. One of the main purposes of this study was to ensure that the effects

observed in Experiment 2 were not driven by the effects of distance on target likability.

Accordingly, it was important to verify that the manipulations of distance did not affect the

degree to which people found the target likable. We asked an independent sample (n = 285)

recruited on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to state the degree to which they found the temporally

near versus the temporally distant target unlikable (1 = extremely unlikable to 7 = extremely

likeable). The results indicated no significant effect of distance on likability, F(1, 284) = .012, p

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= .912, suggesting that the manipulations of target distance did not affect the degree to which

participants found the target likable.

Primary study. We conducted an ANOVA with target distance and outcome as two

between-subjects factors and the 9-item measure of dissatisfaction as the dependent variable

(Cronbach’s alpha = .78). The interaction was significant, F(1, 266) = 5.42, p = .021, μp2 = .02

(see Figure 3). Closer inspection of the data revealed that participants who received the less

desirable certificate showed significantly more dissatisfaction when the target was distant (M =

3.10, SD = 1.09, 95% C.I. [2.89, 3.31]) as opposed to near (M = 2.69, SD = .62, 95% C.I. [2.49,

2.89]), F(1, 266) = 7.23, p = .008, d = .46. By contrast, participants who received the less

feasible certificate showed directionally, but not significantly, more dissatisfaction when the

target was near (M = 3.02, SD = .76, 95% C.I. [2.82, 3.23]) versus distant (M = 2.95, SD = .88,

95% C.I. [2.76, 3.14]), F(1, 266) = .29, p = .59, d = .09.

Close Far2

2.2

2.4

2.6

2.8

3

3.2

Compared to a target, participants received a gift certificate that was:

Less feasible

Less desirable

Target Distance

Dis

sati

sfac

tio

n

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Figure 3. Participants’ dissatisfaction with an imagined restaurant gift certificate as a function of target distance and outcome.

Discussion

In this experiment, we sought to replicate the patterns of effects observed in Experiment

2. While participants were less dissatisfied when they were inferior in high-level versus low-

level dimensions when comparing to a proximal other, we observed a significant increase in

dissatisfaction when the comparison target was distant. Moreover, this effect occurred in a

manner that cannot be explained by likability because it manipulated target distance through

time, which, as suggested by the pretest, was not confounded with target likability. Across three

experiments, therefore, we have now seen that people are more likely to seek out high-level

information about distant others (Experiment 1) and are more emotionally impacted by it

(Experiments 2 and 3).

Experiment 4: Comparing Reading Tasks

In this experiment, participants were led to believe they were working with another

person on a reading task. Experiments 2 and 3 find interactive effects of target distance and

construal-level features of an outcome on emotional responses to that outcome. Building on these

findings, Experiment 4 provides additional evidence that the phenomena observed here have

direct relevance to issues typically studied in Relative Deprivation Theory. The notion of

deprivation as related to differences in labor distribution has a history in the literature. For

example, Freudenthaler and Mikula (1998) examine the sense of injustice that arises from a

perceived unequal division of labor between different groups. Similarly, Akerlof (2005)

examined various feelings of grievance and relative deprivation stemming from labor

inequalities. Thus, modeling a labor phenomenon in the lab, we decided to test whether the

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interaction of target distance and construal-level features would emerge when people were given

tasks to accomplish for completion of their lab study credits.

As noted in Experiment 2, research on action construal has shown that tasks or activities

may be categorized according to means and ends (Freitas et al., 2004; Liberman & Trope, 1998;

Todorov et al., 2007). Means are subordinate to ends because they are substitutable: there may be

many different ways of achieving the same goal. In the context of a reading assignment, we

hypothesized that, because the central goal of reading is to extract information, the

interestingness of the reading assignment would measure the value of the ends. By contrast, the

means is captured by how quickly participants could obtain the information: that is, how short, or

brief, the reading assignment is. We thus operationalized the high- and low-level features of the

reading task as interestingness and brevity, respectively (see Liberman and Trope, 1998, for a

very similar operationalization).

To test the hypothesis that social distance would enhance the importance of high-level

features of comparison relative to low-level features of comparison, we presented participants

with a comparison target that they learned was either similar or dissimilar to them (cf., Liviatan

et al., 2008). Next, participants learned that both they and their partner would be assigned to

complete a reading assignment. According to condition, participants learned that the reading

assignment that they had been given was inferior to their partner’s in either interestingness or

brevity. (In actuality, participants always received the same assignment regardless of condition;

it was only the partner’s assignment that was systematically varied.) We predicted that target

distance would modulate the impact of relative standing on different outcome dimensions: while

participants comparing to distant targets would care most about where they stood relative to their

partner in high-level dimensions (here, interestingness), participants comparing to near targets

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would care most about where they stood in low-level dimensions (here, brevity). As a result,

their satisfaction with their assignment would vary according both to target distance and to which

outcome dimension they were inferior in.

Method

Participants and design. Based on the results of previous experiments we anticipated a

medium-size effect (Cohen’s f = .25, power = 80%), and so sought about one hundred and

twenty-five participants from the undergraduate subject pool at New York University, and by the

end of the academic semester, we were able to collect a total of one hundred and two participants

(81 female, 21 male; mean age 19.1, SD 1.1). Participants were randomly assigned to condition

(target similarity: similar versus dissimilar; outcome: less interesting versus less brief) upon

arrival.

Materials and procedure

Personality questionnaire. Participants were greeted by a male experimenter who

informed them they would be working with a partner and led them into an isolated study room.

The experimenter told participants that the partner had let him know he or she was running a few

minutes late, and in the meantime, that they should get started by filling out the Informed

Consent form and the printed personality questionnaire on the desk in front of them. The

personality questionnaire consisted of ten items, including “Do spelling mistakes annoy you?”

(Yes/No) and “Which describes you better?” (Carefree/Intense). Five minutes later the

experimenter reappeared and informed participants that their partner had arrived and was in the

study room next door. He told participants that they would be trading questionnaires with their

partner so as to get to know each other better. The experimenter took the 10-item paper

Personality Questionnaire and told the participant he would be right back, and in the meantime to

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please fill out the Demographic Information items that were presented on the computer. The

experimenter left the room and, based off answers that had been indicated by participants,

created a questionnaire that appeared to have been made by the partner in the other room. The

questionnaire was designed such that in the similar target condition the partner questionnaire had

a 90% match with the participants, and in the dissimilar target condition a 20% match. After a

few minutes the experimenter returned and handed the fake partner questionnaire to participants

and asked them to answer some questions on the computer about how they imagined their

partner. The first question asked them to write 2-3 sentences about how they were similar or

different from their partner. Then they were asked to complete five questions about how they felt

towards the partner. Participants responded on a 5-point scale how close and similar they felt to

their partner, how much they thought they had in common, and about how much they seemed to

agree and disagree overall.

Reading assignment. Next, the experimenter informed participants that they would now

move onto the main portion of the experiment in which both they and their partner would be

assigned a reading task. He withdrew two reading packets from a folder and placed them on the

desk in front of the participants. He also withdrew a printed spreadsheet that contained

information about the two reading packets. The readings placed before participants varied

according to condition. In both conditions, one of the readings was a psychology article entitled

Dirty Hands and Dirty Mouths: Embodiment of the Moral-Purity Metaphor Is Specific to the

Motor Modality Involved in Moral Transgression (Lee & Schwartz, 2010). This is the reading

that all participants would eventually be assigned to read.

The alternative reading (which the partner would be assigned to read) varied according to

condition. In the less brief condition, the other reading was an excerpt from a statistics article

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explaining the function and calculation of the chi-square test (Fisher & Yates, 1963). In the less

interesting condition, the other reading was a chapter from the Game of Thrones (Martin, 2005).

The table presented along with the readings varied as follows. In both conditions, the second row

contained information about Dirty Hands and Dirty Mouths, stating that 57% of past participants

had found it interesting and that it took an average of 8 minutes to complete. In the less

interesting condition, the first row contained information about the Game of Thrones excerpt,

stating that 96% of participants had found it interesting and that it would take approximately 13

minutes to complete. In the less brief condition, the first row contained information about the

chi-square test reading, stating that 21% of participants had found it interesting and it would take

approximately 3 minutes to complete.

Outcome comparison. The experimenter left the room and allowed participants to peruse

this information for a few minutes. When he reappeared, the experimenter informed participants

that they had been randomly assigned to receive the Dirty Hands and Dirty Mouths reading and

that the partner would be completing the other assignment. This design, which kept the

participant’s outcome constant and only varied that of the comparison target, ensured that any

differences in satisfaction were due to explicit effects of social comparison, rather than

differences in evaluation of their own outcome. To ensure that participants understood the

differing dimensions of the readings, the experimenter explained to them that once they had

finished the reading the experiment would end and they would be free to leave. He then told

them that they would be asked to answer a few preliminary questions on the screen and then

they’d be asked to complete the assignment.

Manipulation check and outcome evaluation. Written instructions asked participants

first to complete a series of questions on 5-point scales asking how interesting and how long they

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thought their and their partner’s readings were. These measures served as manipulation checks

designed to verify that participants believed their reading was less brief or less interesting than

their partner’s reading in the appropriate conditions. Next, participants responded to five items

with 7-point scales assessing their overall evaluations of their reading: “How satisfied are you

with the reading passage you have been assigned, in comparison to the other reading?”; “In

comparison to the other reading that you could have been asked to do, how happy are you with

your reading?”; “How fair do you think it is that you received the reading that you did?”; “How

disappointed are you that you were assigned the reading that you were?”; “Do you think you get

the better reading, or the worse?” Next, partners were given some time to read their passage and

answered some final follow-up questions. Finally, they were probed for suspicion, debriefed,

thanked, and dismissed.

Results and Discussion

Manipulation checks. To verify our closeness manipulation, we collapsed across the five

closeness items (Cronbach’s alpha = .79) to create an overall score of perceived target similarity.

One participant was eliminated for failing to complete the similarity/dissimilarity manipulation.

Consistent with predictions, participants in the dissimilar target condition (M = 4.10, SD = .40)

felt less similar to their partner than those in the similar target condition (M = 1.99, SD = .48),

t(97) = 23.9, p < .001, d = 4.85. Next we assessed whether participants actually believed their

reading was less interesting or less brief than their comparison target in the appropriate

conditions. Overall, those in the less brief condition rated their own reading as longer than their

partner’s (paired t(49) = 7.22, p < .001, d = 2.05) but more interesting (paired t(46) = 5.85, p

< .001, d = 1.72), while those in the less interesting condition rating their own reading as more

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interesting than their partner’s (paired t(49) = -1.86, p = .070), but as longer (paired t(49) = -

11.65, p < .001).

Outcome evaluation. To assess the effect of target similarity and relative standing on

evaluations on the reading assignment, we collapsed across the five outcome-evaluation

measures (reverse-coding where appropriate; Cronbach’s alpha = .82) to create an overall

measure of dissatisfaction with the assignment, and submitted this to a 2 (relative standing: less

brief versus less interesting) x 2 (target similarity: similar versus dissimilar) analysis of variance

(ANOVA). We expected that the effect of relative standing on general satisfaction would vary

according to target similarity, with less interesting reading assignments resulting in a greater

decrease in satisfaction when the target was dissimilar than similar. There were no main effects

of target similarity or of relative standing. However, an interaction emerged between the two

conditions, F(1, 94) = 3.98, p = .049, μp2 = .041 (see Figure 5). Participants who received the less

interesting reading than their partner were significantly more dissatisfied when they were

comparing to a dissimilar target (M = 3.93, SD = 1.03) than when they were comparing to a

similar target (M = 3.22, SD = .66; F(1, 94) = 7.32, p = .008). Participants who received the less

brief reading were not significantly affected by target distance (p = .97). Put another way, while

participants comparing to a similar other showed more dissatisfaction when they received the

less brief (M = 3.69, SD = .69) versus the less interesting reading (M = 3.22, SD = .76), F(1, 94)

= 3.87, p = .052, participants comparing a dissimilar other showed an opposite pattern of means

(M = 3.68, SD = .1.12 versus M = 3.93, SD = 1.03), though this was not statistically significant,

p = .36. Overall, these results suggest that people’s outcome satisfaction is more influenced by

high-level outcome features when comparing to a dissimilar than a similar target.

Discussion

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The purpose of this experiment was to provide additional confirmation of the idea that

distant comparison targets cause high-level outcome attributes to influence satisfaction more

than low-level attributes. In this case, we used a novel measurement of construal level which

pitted means (brevity) versus ends (interestingness). Again we found that target distance

modulates the salience of high- versus low-level outcome features in satisfaction.

One important thing to note in this experiment is the fact that, while the primary

interaction did exceed the .05 threshold for statistical significance, it did so only barely (p =

.049). This is particularly noteworthy considering that, while our power analysis indicated the

need for 125 participants, we fell somewhat short of this by the end of the semester (N = 102).

The required effect size for a sample of this size is f = .28, somewhat larger than anticipated

(previous studies estimated an f of .25). For this reason, the results of this study should be

interpreted with caution, and further research is necessary to determine the reliability of the

estimated effect size.

3

3.2

3.4

3.6

3.8

4

4.2

Similar Dissimilar

Dissatisfaction

ComparisonTarget

Comparedtotarget,participants received

Less brief reading

Less interesting reading

Figure 4. Satisfaction with a reading task according to whether participants received a less brief (low-level, feasibility) or a less interesting (high-level, desirability) reading than a similar or a dissimilar comparison target.

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Experiment 5: DVD Prize and Construal Mindset

While the previous experiments provide convergent evidence for our hypothesis, we have

yet to observe evidence for the purported mechanism directly. To show the role of level of

construal in relative deprivation directly, in the current experiment we manipulate participants’

mindsets (high-level or low-level) and show that this has congruent effects on the emphasis

placed on comparison information. Showing that manipulations of construal-level mindset elicit

the same effects as those obtained under distance would constitute evidence that construal level

is responsible for the previously observed effects of distance on experience of relative

deprivation (Spencer, Zanna, & Fong, 2005). Thus, we predict that manipulations of mindset will

modulate the effects of comparison outcome on dissatisfaction in a similar way as does distance

of the comparison target.

Method

Participants and design. Based on the results of Experiment 2, we sought about two

hundred US citizens from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (effect size estimate: Cohen’s f = .2,

power 80%) and successfully recruited one hundred and ninety participants (127 female, 63

male, mean age 34.2 years, SD = 12.9) to an online study entitled “Who Do You Think You

Are?” in exchange for 30¢ and a chance to win a DVD. (Participants actually had a 1/100 chance

of winning a $10 cash prize, which they could use to purchase a DVD of their choice.)

Participants were randomly assigned to condition in a 2 (high level versus low level) x 2 (DVD

outcome: less feasible or less desirable) design.

Materials and procedure. Participants underwent the same procedure as that of

Experiment 2, with several exceptions. First, instead of being told they were interacting on an

online forum, participants were asked to write an essay introducing themselves to another MTurk

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worker, whose essay they would later have the chance to read. Participants wrote 4-5 sentences

describing their age, occupation, hobbies, goals, etc. They then read a bogus essay from another

“participant” that included innocuous information like “I enjoy all kinds of music” and “I really

enjoy trying new foods.” This allowed us to create the appearance of a genuine comparison

target while holding perceived target similarity constant across conditions.

Next, participants completed a mindset manipulation task adapted from Fujita and

colleagues (Fujita, Trope, Liberman, & Levin-Sagi, 2006). In the high-level condition,

participants generated a category for each of 38 listed items (e.g., “What is a car an example

of?”); in the low-level condition, participants generated an exemplar for each of the same items

(e.g., “What is an example of a car?”). Following this manipulation, participants were exposed to

the same DVD information, and asked the same questions about their satisfaction with their

prize, as in Experiment 2.

Results

Suspicion check. To measure suspicion, we asked independent raters blind to condition

to evaluate participants’ essay for signs of suspicion. No participants wrote anything in their

essay suggesting they were suspicious as to the reality of their partner.

Outcome evaluation. To assess the degree to which relative standing and construal level

mindset affected satisfaction, we collapsed across the nine items to create a general measure of

dissatisfaction (Cronbach’s alpha = .88). The results corroborated the effects of the previous

studies, with a significant interaction emerging between mindset condition and outcome, F(1,

185) = 5.36, p = .022, μp2 = .03 (see Figure 4). When people received a lower-rated outcome than

their target, being in a high-level mindset (M = 2.59, SD = .99, 95% C.I. [2.34, 2.85]) resulted in

marginally more dissatisfaction than being in a low-level mindset (M = 2.29, SD = .82, 95% C.I.

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[2.05, 2.54]); F(1, 185) = 2.76, p = .098, μp2 = .02). By contrast, when people had to wait longer

for their outcome, being in a low-level mindset (M = 2.38, SD = 1.17, 95% C.I. [2.05, 2.54])

resulted in directionally, but not significantly, more dissatisfaction than being in a high-level

mindset (M = 2.06, SD = .58, 95% C.I. [1.80, 2.33]), F(1, 185) = 2.61, p = .108, μp2 = .01.

Low-Level High-Level1

1.5

2

2.5

3

Compared to a target, participants received DVD with:

Longer wait time

Lower star rating

Mindset

Dis

sati

sfac

tio

n

Figure 5. Mean dissatisfaction with DVD prize according to mindset and relative standing.

Discussion

This experiment found a pattern of effects congruent to those obtained in Experiment 2

and 3. Specifically, just as increasing the psychological distance of the target results in a greater

emphasis on the high- versus low-level dimensions of a received outcome, so too does a

manipulation of a high- versus low-level mindset. This thus provides convergent evidence that

the reason psychological distance affects people’s outcome satisfaction is because of changes in

construal level.

General Discussion

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This research provides several important contributions to current understanding of

processes relating to relative deprivation. First and foremost, it qualifies claims originally put

forth by Festinger (1954) and continued by others (e.g., Hakmiller, 1966; Mayseless &

Kruglanski, 1987, Zell & Alicke, 2009) that proximal others are preferred and are more

impactful in comparison. Our results suggest that there are certain situations in which distal

others are no less compelling than proximal others. Furthermore, it shows how dissimilarity does

not necessarily result in a decrease in the impact of comparison: when people compared high-

level outcomes to distant targets, they experienced just as much if not more dissatisfaction as

when they compared to proximal targets.

In addition, our work highlights both the advantages and the perils of comparing to those

that are far away. Instances abound in western society in which people who are objectively well-

off lament their relative inferiority vis-à-vis their local peers. (One need only look at the banker

who is aghast to have received merely a million-dollar bonus to provide a vivid example of such

ideation.) Such local comparison may play a part in chronic dissatisfaction, and has been

documented in classic research on this topic (Stouffer, Suchman, DeVinney, Star, & Williams,

1949; Easterlin, 1976). This suggests that if people in this situation can transcend the immediate

locus of comparison to include others from more distant groups, the negative effects of narrowly

focused comparisons could be mitigated. Encouraging people to maintain a high-level mindset,

therefore, and expand their scope of comparison to a broader range of social targets, has the

potential to ameliorate the chronic dissatisfaction that people may feel in the perennial quest for

success and recognition (see Brickman & Campbell, 1971).

On the other hand, this research also suggests how to foment discontent when more is

needed. Research on the social structures that exacerbate inequality highlight certain phenomena

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that dissuade people from discontent and protest. Certain trivial resources serve to mollify the

victims of injustice and whitewash grievances that would otherwise be subject to social protest.

For instance, research on system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994; Kay et al., 2008)

suggests that people are motivated by the need for security to avoid challenging the status quo.

This and related research suggests that local preoccupations may exert more psychological

weight on individuals and prevent them from effectively dealing with the overarching issues that

perpetuate inequality and injustice. The fact that high-level construals are as associated with

comparison to more distant targets points the way to a consciousness-raising intervention in

which underprivileged individuals who are subject to systemic injustice can be encouraged to see

their relative disadvantage through a wider lens (Pliskin, Yudkin, Jost, & Trope, 2018).

Overall, then, the possibility of comparing to more distant targets has the potential both to

mitigate discontent when none is warranted (as in cases in which the relatively privileged are

preoccupied with local trivial gripes and grievances), and to encourage it when necessary (as

when victims of inequality are sated by specious trinkets of wealth and opportunity). On both

ends of the power spectrum, therefore, high level construals may comprise an effective

intervention in promoting appropriate attitudes toward social and material outcomes.

Conceptually, our work also echoes themes originally put forward under the self-

evaluation maintenance model (SEM) by Tesser and colleagues (Tesser & Campbell, 1982;

Tesser, 1988; Tesser, 2000), which examined the effects of target distance and outcome

relevance on self-esteem. This work demonstrated that the self is most threatened by upward

comparisons when a given comparison domain is relevant and the comparison target close. The

present work adds to this prior work by suggesting that the psychological importance placed on a

given outcome dimension may differ according to target distance. While the SEM treats domain

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relevance as immutable, we suggest that the focus and salience of a given outcome dimension

may shift in relevance depending on whether the target is proximal or distal. While proximal

targets produce an emphasis on low-level outcome dimensions, distal targets increase the

salience of high-level dimensions. Furthermore, the present work suggests that threats to the self

may emerge even when the target is distant: in our studies we actually found the greatest levels

of dissatisfaction when people compared to distant targets on high-level dimensions. Overall, we

believe this work provides a useful addition to SEM’s conceptualization of the effects of target

distance on relative deprivation.

Our findings have close conceptual ties to work in relative deprivation theory on the

consequences of group membership for comparison processes. For example, in their meta-review

of relative deprivation, Smith et al (2012) make the distinction between processes related to

comparisons with in-group versus out-group members. While the authors say the latter

phenomenon is “rarely discussed,” they also suggest that a fundamental difference may arise

when people compare themselves to out-group members as a function of their identification with

their own group, as well as the degree of representativeness they perceive the out-group member

to have. While individual-level deprivation may arise when identification is low, deprivation on

behalf of the group may occur in cases of high identification. While we did not test group

identification directly, these insights can map onto our own insofar as the question of how group

membership impacts the information that is given precedence in a comparison has never been

tested. Our results suggest that when people compare themselves with members of different

groups—whether social, demographic, racial, geographical, or otherwise—they will tend to

focus on higher-level aspects of their comparison with that group, and reserve their attention to

low-level qualities to comparisons with members of their own group.

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One important question is the degree to which the findings can be extrapolated to the real

world. It could be argued that, given the artificial laboratory setting of these studies, we have

created conditions that would never be encountered in everyday life. Of particular concern is the

idea that, in the real world, interpersonal similarity is accompanied by a host of other traits that

make similar others more relevant to comparers.

We have several responses to this. First, we note that several experiments use multiple

forms of distance which might be more comparable to the differences encountered in real-life

situations. For example, Experiment 2 varies both the physical distance and the level of

interpersonal similarity between participants and the target, thus rendering it more similar to the

real-life scenarios in which we may know less about people who are located further from us in

space.

Second, we note that the manipulation of pure similarity comes as part of a long line of

research in social comparison that isolates a single dimension of interpersonal distance of

dissimilarity in order to determine with greater precision the psychological consequences of

varying that particular dimension (see, e.g., Goethals & Darley 1977; Miller, 1982; Hakmiller,

1966). Such a tradeoff is always an inherent question in laboratory research but this controlled

methodology is one critical tool to be used in an arsenal of empirical methods aimed at

understanding psychological effects both holistically and in isolation.

Third, to the extent that our laboratory experiments do deviate from certain real-life

cases, we do not think this fact renders them invalid, for several reasons. First, cases in which

people have equal amounts of information about similar versus dissimilar targets, like in our

studies, are more frequent than might appear at first blush. Consider the world of social media.

Social media affords people the opportunity to meet those who live around the world and those

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who live closer to home, obtaining (e.g., via online profiles) similar amounts of information

about both. In such cases, while the distance of the comparison target may vary, the amount of

information stays the same. We believe our results are helpful in understanding how comparison

processes might occur in such cases.

Finally, in isolating the effects of psychological distance in social comparison, our

research can aid in explaining and predicting the psychological consequences of more complex

scenarios. For example, it is undoubtedly the case that, while people tend to compare to similar

others, they also at times compare to those with whom they have less in common. In such cases,

we can now say with greater confidence that high-level attributes would be preferred. Of course,

this does not mean that this will always be the case. But isolating the effects of psychological

distance in the lab help us to predict with greater accuracy the possible consequences of richer

situations.

Another possible critique of these results is that they might obtain even in the absence of

a comparison target. If this is the case, then, it might be argued, our results represent a

theoretically uninteresting extension of construal level theory, since they merely corroborate past

research. We have two responses to this. First of all, most comparison tasks, including those

included in our study, would be odd if they excluded a social comparison target. For example,

when the outcome people are comparing themselves on is compensation for work performed

(e.g., a prize), then the clear comparison is a prize received by another person. In such cases, the

presence of another person is a critical part of the phenomenon.

On the other hand, we acknowledge that, in certain cases, people might compare their

outcome to a possible other outcome—that is, a counterfactual—which could serve as a

reference point against which their own outcome can be compared, without introducing the need

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for a comparison target in the form of a different individual. These situations are often thought of

as self-comparisons, and involve comparisons to possible outcomes, or to future/past outcomes

(Stuart, 1970). This is an interesting case and one about which, to our knowledge, there has been

no research. We note that, in a long line of research in social comparison, there is little if any

research on comparisons to agent-less outcomes. We can predict that more distal comparison

targets (e.g., self-related standards form the more distal past/future; less likely counterfactuals)

would emphasize the weight of high-level compared to low-level comparison dimensions. This

would be an extension of the present framework and would be a fruitful potential topic for future

research

Our studies examined people’s deprivation-related thoughts and feelings as a result of

social comparison. The literature leaves no doubt that these are important outcomes in and of

themselves: how frustrated people feel and how unfairly they think they were treated is important

not only for their own psychological well-being, but also for their functioning in a group or an

organization in terms of their willingness to contribute, their loyalty, and their team work (e.g.,

Kahneman et al., 2004; Brayfield & Rothe, 1951; Heneman & Schwab, 1985). While examining

behavioral outcomes of a sense of deprivation is beyond the scope of the present set of studies,

we believe they present exciting avenues for future research. We might predict, based on our

model, that action that results from comparison to more distal others might be more principled

and directed towards long-term consequences than action that results from comparisons with

proximal others (Ledgerwood, Trope, & Liberman, 2010). For example, it might be that a person

who compares herself to a colleague in the same department would think that she has a smaller

office, and ask her boss for a transfer, but a person who compared herself to a worker in a

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different company would think of the more general concept of “work conditions” and initiate a

more far-reaching action of renovating offices.

Overall, this research adds to the scientific understanding of how people may learn about

themselves from near and distant others. When people travel, when they rub shoulders with a

stranger on the sidewalk, or when they encounter someone with a very different viewpoint on

social media, they are likely to immediately and spontaneously forge some form of comparison

with that individual (Gilbert, Geissler, & Morris, 1995). What we show here is that the

conclusions and affective outcomes of that comparison are unlikely to be attenuated given the

perception of distance from the comparison target. Rather than uniformly undermining the

emotional impact of comparison, psychological distance instead shifts the emphasis of

comparison to high-level rather than to low-level features. For instance, when a traveler

encounters a new culture, instead of wondering whether she has a nicer phone than others she

meets, she may start to compare herself on dimensions such as quality of life, moral values, and

relationships. Coming up short abroad may thus lead to efforts to make amends back home on

the things that are most important. In this way, lessons learned from distant others may be as

powerful as those gleaned from the people around us.

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