Dr Katzenstein continues…
“Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of Simha, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
Today, we're going to talk about the concept of social comparison, which is a process of evaluating one’s self by comparing one's attributes, abilities, achievements, and overall status to those of others.
It's actually a natural human tendency to engage in social comparison, and it can occur in various aspects of life, such as, physical appearance, wealth, intelligence, social status, and accomplishment.
We’ll use a metaphor to explain why engaging in this phenomenon on a consistent basis can be quite harmful.
Imagine climbing Mount Everest. Obviously, your goal is to get to the top. In order to do so, you have to focus on each step that you take, one at a time.
It's you and the mountain. There's nobody else involved. But what happens if we engage in social comparison while we're on the mountain? We can see people ahead of us and we can say to ourselves, “Hey, those people are going faster than me.” What happens if, due to this comparison, we now try to go faster than we're capable of? We're going to put ourselves in a significant amount of risk, because our pace is very different than the pace of those ahead of us. If we go too quickly, obviously that can present a number of risks and dangers that we're not prepared for.
Now, let's look at it the other way. We can also see people well behind us, and we could say to ourselves, “Oh, I'm doing pretty well. I can take it easy.” We may not realize it, but we can become complacent. When we become complacent and take it easy, that also leads to a number of dangers and risks.
The message is that we need to focus on ourselves and what we're capable of in the world; how much we can achieve based on our capabilities and our capacity. If we focus on others, those that are ahead of us (or rather, what we perceive as being ahead of us) or those behind us (again, what we perceive as being behind), we end up shifting the focus away from ourselves and our capacity, in order to try to compete with others, and that can lead to dangers.
In real life, we can look at a few elements that can be impacted.
One is self-esteem and self-worth. Social comparison can significantly impact an individual's self-esteem and self-worth. When we compare ourselves to those whom we perceive as more successful, more attractive, or more accomplished, we're going to feel inadequate or inferior. This obviously can lead to a decline in self-esteem and even a negative self-image. Another thing that can happen is that it can lead to envy and resentment. Social comparison can trigger feelings of envy, resentment or jealousy, when seeing others with higher social status, more wealth or greater achievement. It can create a sense of unfairness or dissatisfaction. We think we’re not really doing much, if other people are doing more.
These negative emotions can harm us and our relationships. It can lead to to hostility and animosity towards others.
Obviously, this can create internal turmoil, which is very difficult to get out of.
Thank you”