Social comparison information is not always prioritized: Temporal performance feedback dominates self-assessment in dysphoria
Abstract
Social and temporal comparisons inform self-evaluation. In educational and work settings, social comparison information seems to affect performance self-assessments more strongly than temporal comparison information. We investigated whether this “higher assigned priority of social comparison information” (HAPSCI) also occurs in people with symptoms of depression, a condition associated with aberrant feedback processing. In a false feedback experiment, we studied the effects of social and temporal comparison information on self-assessments in a sample of N=159 individuals with dysphoria. Participants received concurrent social and temporal comparison feedback on their cognitive performance in a visuospatial 2-back task, which was either favorable (improvement over time or outperforming other participants) or unfavorable (deterioration or being outperformed). Only temporal comparison feedback affected performance self-assessments, while only unfavorable social comparison feedback impacted objective performance. Our results suggest that HAPSCI may not generalize across populations. Individuals with depressive symptoms might be more receptive to temporal than social comparison feedback. We discuss how appraisal of the motivational significance of comparison outcomes, sample characteristics, and experimental procedures may shape effects on self-evaluation.
Related
- An Objective Assessment for Plank Performance in Active Adults With and Without Low Back Pain: A Reliability and Comparison Study
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Preoperative Assessment of Anal Fistula: Diagnostic Performance and Comparison of the St. James and Garg Classifications
- Retrospective Assessment of LLM Decision-Making for IOL Power Selection in Cataract Surgery in Comparison with Surgeon Performance
- When Can Ultra-Short Paired-Comparison Assessment Recover Trait Information? A Simulation and Empirical Illustration
- Filling the information gap: a validated comparison of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude for penile cancer patient education
BibTeX
@misc{englert2026social,
title = {{Social comparison information is not always prioritized: Temporal performance feedback dominates self-assessment in dysphoria}},
author = {Julia Englert and Thomas Meyer and Nexhmedin Morina},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/m9uf6_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/m9uf6_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Social comparison information is not always prioritized: Temporal performance feedback dominates self-assessment in dysphoria
AU - Julia Englert
AU - Thomas Meyer
AU - Nexhmedin Morina
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/m9uf6_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/m9uf6_v1/
AB - Social and temporal comparisons inform self-evaluation. In educational and work settings, social comparison information seems to affect performance self-assessments more strongly than temporal comparison information. We investigated whether this “higher assigned priority of social comparison information” (HAPSCI) also occurs in people with symptoms of depression, a condition associated with aberrant feedback processing. In a false feedback experiment, we studied the effects of social and temporal comparison information on self-assessments in a sample of N=159 individuals with dysphoria. Participants received concurrent social and temporal comparison feedback on their cognitive performance in a visuospatial 2-back task, which was either favorable (improvement over time or outperforming other participants) or unfavorable (deterioration or being outperformed). Only temporal comparison feedback affected performance self-assessments, while only unfavorable social comparison feedback impacted objective performance. Our results suggest that HAPSCI may not generalize across populations. Individuals with depressive symptoms might be more receptive to temporal than social comparison feedback. We discuss how appraisal of the motivational significance of comparison outcomes, sample characteristics, and experimental procedures may shape effects on self-evaluation.
ER -