Individuals’ Acceptance of Their Peers’ Relative Situations

Four experiments (N=648) found that in the context of social comparison, people have a lower willingness to accept their peers achieving their goals compared with their peers falling below the minimum requirement (Experiments 1-4). The reason for this phenomenon is that the peers' success can trigger a stronger sense of relative deprivation in individuals (Experiments 1 and 2). When the competitiveness in the situation decreases or when peers make efforts, people's willingness to accept their peers' success will increase (Experiments 3 and 4).Both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 were single-factor (peer relative situation: suffering vs. success) between-subject designs, with the dependent variable being the willingness of the subjects to accept the peer relative situations, and measuring the subjects' sense of relative deprivation as a mediating variable. Additionally, Experiment 1 measured the participants' social approval as a covariate. Experiment 3 adopted a between-subject design of (peer relative situation: suffering vs. success) × 2 (situational competitiveness: high vs. low), with the dependent variable being the willingness of the subjects to accept the situation, and measuring the subjects' own altruistic tendencies. Experiment 4 adopted a between-subject design of (peer relative situation: suffering vs. success) × 2 (situational competitiveness: high vs. low), with the same measured variables as in Experiment 3.