Psychological Development and Education ›› 2022, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (6): 778-785.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2022.06.03

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The Influences of Social Comparison and Attribution Feedback on Individual Dishonest Behavior

YAO Lin, LIU Fuhui, LI Weiqiang, ZHANG Xiaoqi, YUAN Bo   

  1. Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo 315211
  • Published:2022-11-29

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Abstract: As a way of people to know themselves, social comparison plays an important role in social life. Previous studies have found that social comparison can extremely affect individual psychology and behavior, such as self-concept and self-esteem. However, it is still unclear how social comparison in different directions affects individual dishonesty because most of these studies just focus on intrapersonal consequences. In addition, in the process of receiving social comparison information, people also receive different types of feedback about their performances. Studies have detected that when individuals attribute the success or failure to their ability, their subsequent performances are more affected. Will the different types of attribution feedback (ability vs. endeavor) modulate the effect of social comparison on dishonesty? The present study aims to explore the impact of social comparison on individual dishonest behavior, and whether attribution feedback modulates this effect. The results showed that: (1) different directions of social comparison significantly affect individual dishonest behavior. Specifically, relative to downward and no comparison, upward comparison increased individual subsequent dishonest behavior; (2) attribution feedback modulated the effect of social comparison on dishonest behavior. Especially, after upward comparison, receiving endeavor feedback decreased individual subsequent dishonest behavior, compared with receiving ability feedback. In sum, the results of this study demonstrated that upward social comparison could increase individual subsequent dishonest behavior, and attribution feedback modulated this effect. Therefore, theresults not only expand and enrich the related areas which aim to investigate the influence of social comparison on behavior, but also have important implications on how to reduce the occurrence of dishonest behavior. When individuals experience social comparison, especially upward comparison, giving them more feedback about their endeavor and allowing them to experience controllability can, to some extent, reduce their subsequent dishonesty.

Key words: social comparison, dishonest behavior, attribution feedback, ability feedback, endeavor feedback

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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