Economic Inequality and Competitive Attitude Survey Xuan 2026

Research Hypothesis
This study hypothesized that perceived economic inequality would positively predict upward social comparison, which in turn would positively predict two types of competitive attitudes: hypercompetitive attitude and personal development competitive attitude. Upward social comparison was proposed to serve as a mediator in these relationships.
What the Data Is and How It Was Gathered
The dataset includes responses from 162 college students recruited in China. An adapted version of the Bimboola paradigm was used to manipulate participants' perception of economic inequality (0 = low economic inequality condition, 1 = high economic inequality condition). After the manipulation, participants completed measures of upward social comparison tendency and competitive attitudes, including hypercompetitive attitude and personal development competitive attitude. Gender and grade level were collected as control variables.
What the Data Shows and Notable Findings
The data showed that economic inequality significantly and positively predicted hypercompetitive attitude, with a significant direct effect (β = .18, p < .05). However, the direct effect of economic inequality on personal development competitive attitude was not significant (β = .01, p = .86).

Upward social comparison mediated the relationship between economic inequality and both types of competitive attitudes. Notably, the mediating role differed across the two attitudes. For hypercompetitive attitude, upward social comparison served as a partial mediator, with an indirect effect of .05 (95% CI [.01, .10]), accounting for 20.3% of the total effect. For personal development competitive attitude, upward social comparison served as a full mediator, with an indirect effect of .08 (95% CI [.01, .16]), accounting for 87.5% of the total effect.
A notable finding is that personal development competitive attitude depended entirely on the cognitive process of upward social comparison, whereas hypercompetitive attitude could be directly triggered by environmental cues of threat. This divergence in pathways suggests fundamental differences between the two types of competitive attitudes.
How to Interpret and Use the Data
All effects were estimated using a bias corrected percentile Bootstrap method with 5,000 resamples. A 95% confidence interval that does not contain zero indicates statistical significance. The reported β values are standardized regression coefficients, which can be used to compare the strength of different paths.
The data were analyzed using a mediation model in Mplus 8.3. Researchers may use this dataset for further testing of social comparison theory, meta analyses on economic inequality and competition, replication studies of mediation models, or as empirical evidence for educational interventions targeting healthy competition among students.