Performance Evaluation Via Social Comparison: Performance Similarity Versus Related-Attribute Similarity

Festinger's theory of social comparison states that people prefer to compare themselves with those of similar ability and that such comparisons produce more stable and accurate evaluations. For this reason it is expected that the evaluations formed after comparison with similar scores should be held with more certainty. However, in a restatement of social comparison theory, Goethals and Darley propose that people compare with those who are similar with regard to traits related to performance. The present paper reports the results oftwo experiments conduct ed to examine the effects of similarity on performance evaluations, satisfaction and evaluation certainty. Experiment l manipulated performance score similarity, but found no significant differences in evaluation certainty, a result which is counter to the typical interpretation of Festinger's theory. Experiment 2 manipulated both performance and related attribute similarity. As in Experiment 1, performance similarity had no effect on evaluation certainty, but greater certainty was exhibited after comparison with others similar on related attributes. The results are interpreted as support for Goethals and Darley's related attribute hypothesis.