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Chapter 4 Why Do We Compare? Comparison Informs Us For me they normally happen, these career crises, often, actually, on a Sunday evening, just as the sun is starting to set, and the gap between my hopes for myself, and the reality of my life, start to diverge so painfully that I normally end up weeping into a pillow. . . . I’m mentioning all this because I think this is not merely a personal problem. You may think I’m wrong in this. But I think that we live in an age when our lives are regularly punctuated by career crises, by moments when what we thought we knew, about our lives, about our careers, comes into contact with a threatening sort of reality. —Alain de Botton, “A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success” (2009) W E ALL need to know where we stand, especially in those “moments when what we thought we knew, about our lives, about our careers, [our relationships, our appearance, our health] comes into contact with a threatening sort of reality.” Life requires that our self-view at least approximately fit our reality, not to mention our hopes. Psychologists know a lot about this. One major reason we compare ourselves with others is to gain information in order to evaluate and improve ourselves, functions that serve the twin motives of prediction and control. Comparison informs us. Our need to understand (and perhaps control) our fate runs deep. We are healthier and happier when we think that we know who we are and where we stand. Self-knowledge adapts us to navigate our days, from the minor level (“Do I wake up easily?” “Am I a good tennis player?”) to the major (“Do I get along well with my patchwork family?” “Do I reliably meet my work deadlines?”). Evolutionary psychologists argue that a selfconcept serves our survival needs because it helps us not only in planning our own actions but also in coordinating with others.1 How could we know whom to join and whom to avoid without knowing who we are? 79 80 Envy Up, Scorn Down How could we know what role to play when we do join others? How do we know what we can and cannot do if we do not compare our abilities to others? How well we get up, get by at tennis, get along with others, or get things done—all of these are relative judgments. Whether we should be the local alarm clock, tennis partner, family mediator, or group motivator depends on our abilities relative to those of others who are available .2 Other people serve as a reality check on our abilities (“I may be better than most people at getting up without an alarm clock, but I know where I stand relative to others as a tennis player, and it’s not good.”). Having information allows us to predict what will happen, and that is a comfort. By and large, we do not like surprises, at least not the ones that come without party hats. Even more, we would like to be able to control what will happen, or at least understand the contingencies between what we do and what we get. We like to know about upcoming parties, raises, lay-offs, proposals, and babies; also, we prefer to have some say in these events. What is more, the illusion of information and control—as long as it is not too far from reality—matters more to us than its accuracy.3 That is, many of us tend to overestimate our own knowledge and influence, which reassures us that the world is not random and that what we do makes a difference. At a minimum, we like to believe that a trusted someone is in control, whether that someone is our president, our tech support, or our god. Indeed, some researchers suggest that our persistent religious beliefs stem from a need for at least vicarious control.4 Our motives for seeking prediction and control are among the most basic to our survival as social creatures.5 Chief among our tactics for seeking information and control is social comparison with similar others. Even though we may deny that we are doing it, we do. For example, in interviews, women with breast cancer almost all spontaneously offered comparisons to how other patients were coping, and by comparing downward to women doing worse, most of them estimated that they themselves were doing better (see figure 4.1).6 Information helps us...

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