The concept that really struck a cord with me this week was social comparison theory. According to
Festinger (1954), because we are social beings, we learn about ourselves from
other people. Specifically, when objective standards are unavailable, we
evaluate our abilities by comparing these abilities to those of other people in
similar situations as ourselves in order to receive the most accurate
information (Festinger, 1954). However, some studies (e.g., Klein 1997) have
shown that social comparison theory is still applicable in situations that do
offer objective standards, such as grading rubrics.
Upon learning about this theory, I immediately thought back
to my AP English IV class in high school. In high school, English was my thing (and everyone knew it,
apparently). I was always the one who usually got the highest grade in class
(e.g., a 99 because our teacher didn’t believe in 100s), even when I thought I
did horribly and thought I didn’t write they way the teacher wanted us to write.
When we would finally get our graded papers back, my friends always asked what
my grade was. If it was higher than theirs, they didn’t seem too surprised
because it was expected. We had known each other for six years after all; my
writing abilities were not anything new.
It wasn’t until about two months into the school year that I
found out that I was part of a grading spectrum. In other words, if writing
ability was scored on a scale from 1 to 10, I was 10. This spectrum became
known to me when I heard one of my friends suggest to the teacher that instead
of putting numerical grades on our paper, the teacher should score our papers
from Samantha to RJ. I was shocked to
hear about this scale, and I immediately asked my friend to elaborate. He told me that I was at the higher-end of the scale, while RJ,
who was a friend in the same grade as us, was at the lower-end. What amazed me
was that everyone in class agreed with this scale.
Although it should have been flattering, there was a
downside to being considered the top of the grading scale in this class. When
my grade was lower than another student’s, even by one point, everyone had a
field day because someone did better than me. Furthermore, certain people in
the class would make a show of how shocking it was that I got an 88 instead of
a grade in the 90s. According to Festinger’s theory (1954), these comparisons
about grades allowed my peers to be able to evaluate where they stood in
writing ability on a particular assignment. If they did better than me, then
their ability to write well was reaffirmed. On this note, the comments my
friends made about my grades in relation to their grades were always made in
jest, and I never took offense to anything they said about my grades. However,
I could not help feeling sympathetic to RJ; here’s hoping to him not knowing
about this scale.
I believe this memory still stays with me because I find it
humorous and probably because it is suppose to be flattering that I was
considered the highest point on the writing ability spectrum. I feel that
overall this situation is a good example for illustrating social comparison
theory (Festinger, 1954) in that even though almost all the students received
passing grades on all their papers throughout the year, what they were
interested in (myself included) was how they did in comparison to others on
each assignment. Maybe they weren’t as good as Samantha this time around, but
at least they were still better than RJ.
________________________
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison
processes. Human Relations, 7, 117-140.
Klein, W.M. (1997). Objective standards are not enough:
Affective, self-evaluating, and behavioral responses to social
comparison information. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 72,
763-774.
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