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Title:	Toward Mindful Social Comparison: When Subjective and Objective Selves are Mutually Exclusive
Author:	Langer, Ellen; Djikic, Maja Note: Order does not necessarily reflect citation order of authors.
Citation:	Djikic, Maja, and Ellen J. Langer. 2007. Toward mindful social comparison: when subjective and objective selves are mutually exclusive. New Ideas in Psychology 25, no. 3: 221-232.
Access Status:	At the direction of the depositing author this work is not currently accessible through DASH.
Full Text & Related Files:	Langer_TowardMindfulSocial.pdf (146.8Kb; PDF)
Abstract:	Although mindless evaluations typically accompany social comparisons, they are not necessary, and may be costly. We describe how mindlessness enters the social comparison process at two points. First, during the social comparison both self and other are mindlessly de-contextualized, through (1) biased selection of relevant behaviors, (2) biased selection of criteria along which behaviors are compared, (3) lack of knowledge of intent behind behavior, (4) lack of knowledge about representativeness of behavior, (5) lack of knowledge about typicality of future behavior as moderated by learning, (6) improper understanding of the meaning of behavior, and (7) lack of knowledge about motivations generating the comparisons. Second, the affective results of the social comparison are often mindlessly generalized to the global self, while the breadth and complexity of the network of attributes that constitute to the 'self' is ignored. Global-self-evaluative social comparisons forfeit the potential of gaining accurate and usable information about personal attributes.
Published Version:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.newideapsych.2007.03.001
Citable link to this page:	http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3203272

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  Peer reviewed scholarly articles from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University

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