How do I know how I am doing? Use of different types of comparison in judgment of well-being in patients seeking psychological treatment and healthy controls.
comparative thinking
comparison standards
counterfactual
social comparison
well-being
Journal
Applied psychology. Health and well-being
ISSN: 1758-0854
Titre abrégé: Appl Psychol Health Well Being
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101502957
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
11 2022
11 2022
Historique:
received:
28
08
2021
accepted:
25
12
2021
pubmed:
12
1
2022
medline:
11
11
2022
entrez:
11
1
2022
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Judgment of well-being is formed on the spot, and we know little about its foundations. We aimed at examining the role of comparison standards in informing evaluations of well-being in a clinical and a nonclinical sample. In a semi-structured face-to-face interview, individuals seeking psychological treatment and healthy control individuals rated how they have been feeling in general and relative to specific comparison standards and were each time invited to substantiate their ratings. Independent coders assessed number, type, direction, and specificity of reported comparisons. When asked to explain why they chose a particular rating of their well-being, 93% of clinical participants and 61% of nonclinical participants spontaneously reported some type of comparison standard. Both groups reported highest well-being ratings relative to social and past temporal comparisons and lowest relative to prospective temporal comparison. Furthermore, clinical participants engaged in more upward than downward comparisons, whereas this was not the case for healthy control participants. Our findings suggest that evaluations of well-being are informed by different comparison types and that individuals with clinical complaints use more comparisons when evaluating their well-being. The results encourage further investigation of comparative thinking as an underlying mechanism of judgment of well-being and ill-being.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
1369-1388Informations de copyright
© 2022 The Authors. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of International Association of Applied Psychology.
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