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Festinger, Leon. (1954).A Theory of Social Comparison Processes, Retrieved September 12, 2007, from hum.sagepub.com database 

A Theory of Social Comparison Processes 

Leon Festinger

 

 

In this paper we shall present a further development of a previously published theory concerning 



opinion influence processes in social groups (7). This further development has enabled us to extend the 

theory to deal with other areas, in addition to opinion formation, in which social comparison is 

important. Specifically, we shall develop below how the theory applies to the appraisal and evaluation of 

abilities as well as opinions. 

 

Such theories and hypotheses in the area of social psychology are frequently viewed in terms of 



how “plausible” they seem. “Plausibility” usually means whether or not the theory or hypothesis fits 

one’s intuition or one’s common sense. In this meaning much of the theory which is to be presented here 

is not” plausible “. The theory does, however, explain a considerable amount of data and leads to 

testable derivations. Three experiments, specifically designed to test predictions from this extension of 

the theory, have now been completed (5, 12, 19). They all provide good corroboration. We will in the 

following pages develop the theory and present the relevant data. 



Hypothesis I: There exists, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and his abilities. 

 

While opinions and abilities may, at first glance, seem to be quite different things, there is a close 



functional tie between them. They act together in the manner in which they affect behavior. A person’s 

cognition (his opinions and beliefs) about the situation in which he exists and his appraisals of what he is 

capable of doing (his evaluation of his abilities) will together have bearing on his behavior. The holding 

of incorrect opinions and/or inaccurate appraisals of one’s abilities can be punishing or even fatal in 

many situations. 

 

It is necessary, before we proceed, to clarify the distinction between opinions and evaluations of 



abilities since at first glance it may seem that one’s evaluation of one’s own ability is an opinion about 

it. Abilities are of course manifested only through performance which is assumed to depend upon the 

particular ability. The clarity of the manifestation or performance can vary from instances where there is 

no clear ordering criterion of the ability to instances where the performance which reflects the ability 

can be clearly ordered. In the former case, the evaluation of the ability does function like other opinions 

which are not directly testable in “objective reality’. For example, a person’s evaluation of his ability to 

write poetry will depend to a large extent on the opinions which others have of his ability to write 

poetry. In cases where the criterion is unambiguous and can be clearly ordered, this furnishes an 

objective reality for the evaluation of one’s ability so that it depends less on the opinions of other 

persons and depends more on actual comparison of one’s performance with the performance of others. 

Thus, if a person evaluates his running ability, he will do so by comparing his time to run some distance 

with the times that other persons have taken. 

 

In the following pages, when we talk about evaluating an ability, we shall mean specifically the 



evaluation of that ability in situations where the performance is unambiguous and is known. Most 

situations in real life will, of course, present situations which are a mixture of opinion and ability 

evaluation. 

 

In a previous article (7) the author posited the existence of a drive to determine whether or not 



one’s opinions were “correct”. We are here stating that this same drive also produces behavior in people 

oriented toward obtaining an accurate appraisal of their abilities. 

 

The behavioral implication of the existence of such a drive is that we would expect to observe 



behaviour on the part of persons which enables them to ascertain whether or not their opinions are 

correct and also behavior which enables them accurately to evaluate their abilities. It is consequently 

                                                 

 The development of this theory was aided by a grant from the Behavioral Sciences Division of the Ford Foundation. It is 



part of the research program of the Laboratory for Research in Social Relations. 

 



A Theory of Social Comparison Processes 

   

              2

 

necessary to answer the question as to how persons go about evaluating their opinions and their abilities. 



Hypothesis II: To the extent that objective, non-social means are not available, people evaluate their opinions and 

abilities by comparison respectively with the opinions and abilities of others. 

 

In many instances, perhaps most, whether or not an opinion is correct cannot be immediately 



determined by reference to the physical world. Similarly it is frequently not possible to assess accurately 

one’s ability by reference to the physical world, One could, of course, test the opinion that an object was 

fragile by hitting it with a hammer, but how is one to test the opinion that a certain political candidate is 

better than another, or that war is inevitable? Even when there is a possible immediate physical referent 

for an opinion, it is frequently not likely to be employed. The belief, for example, that tomatoes are 

poisonous to humans (which was widely held at one time) is unlikely to be tested. The situation is 

similar with respect to the evaluation of one’s abilities. If the only use to which, say, jumping ability was 

put was to jump across a particular brook, it would be simple to obtain an accurate evaluation of one’s 

ability in this respect. However, the unavailability of the opportunity for such clear testing and the vague 

and multipurpose use of various abilities generally make such a clear objective test not feasible or not 

useful. For example, how does one decide how intelligent one is? Also, one might find out how many 

seconds it takes a person to run a certain distance, but what does this mean with respect to his ability—is 

it adequate or not? For both opinions and abilities, to the extent that objective physical bases for 

evaluation are not available, subjective judgments of correct or incorrect opinion and subjectively 

accurate assessments of one’s ability depend upon how one compares with other persons. 

Corollary II A: In the absence of both a physical and a social comparison, subjective evaluations of opinions and 

abilities are unstable. 

 

There exists evidence from studies on “level of aspiration” which shows clearly the instability of 



evaluations of abilities in the absence of comparison with other persons (13, 15, 20, 21, 23). The typical 

situation in an experiment designed to study “level of aspiration” is as follows: a person is given a task 

to perform which is serial in nature. This may be a series of trials of throwing darts at a target or a series 

of information tests or a series of puzzles or the like. After each trial the person is told what he scored 

(how many points he made or how many correct answers or bow long it took) and is asked to state what 

score he expects to get or will try for on the next trial. These experiments have previously been 

interpreted in terms of goal directed behavior. If we examine the situation closely, however, it is 

apparent that the individual’s stated “level of aspiration” is actually a statement of what he considers a 

good performance to be. In other words, it is his evaluation, at that time, of what score he should get, 

that is, his evaluation of his ability. The data show clearly that if the person scores as well as he said he 

expected to do, he feels he has done well (experiences success) and if he scores less than his 

“aspirations” he feels he has done poorly (experiences failure) (17). 

 

Let us examine, then, the stability of these evaluations in a situation where the person performing 



the task has no opportunity for comparison with others. The data from these studies show that the “level 

of aspiration” fluctuates markedly as performance fluctuates. If the person makes a score better than his 

previous one, then what was formerly considered a good performance is no longer good and his “level of 

aspiration” goes up. If his performance drops, his “level of aspiration” drops. Even after a person has 

had a good deal of experience at a task, the evaluation of what is good performance continues to 

fluctuate. 

 

Similar instability is found in the case of opinions. When, using the autokinetic effect, persons 



are asked to make judgments of how far the point of light moves, these judgments continue to fluctuate 

before there are any comparison persons.

1

 

 



To the extent, then, that there are relevant data available, they tend to confirm Corollary II A 

concerning the instability of evaluations in the absence of comparisons. 



Corollary II B: When an objective, non-social basis for the evaluation of one’s ability or opinion is readily available 

persons will not evaluate their opinions or abilities by comparison with others. 




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