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The Journal of Genetic

Psychology: Research
and Theory on Human
Development
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Social Comparison and

Depression
a b
Adrian Furnham & Chris R. Brewin
a
Department of Psychology , University
College London
b
Institute of Psychiatry , University of London
Published online: 11 Sep 2012.

To cite this article: Adrian Furnham & Chris R. Brewin (1988) Social Comparison
and Depression, The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on
Human Development, 149:2, 191-198, DOI: 10.1080/00221325.1988.10532152

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00221325.1988.10532152

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 Journal of Genetic Psychology, 149(2), 191-198

Social Comparison and Depression

ADRIAN FURNHAM
Department of Psychology
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University College London

CHRIS R. BREWIN
Institute of Psychiatry
University of London

ABSTRACT. It has been suggested that a central factor in depression is the experi­
ence of feeling different from others. This study set out to examine the relationship
between pre-attributional consensus judgments, perceived trait discrepancy from oth­
ers, and depression. As predicted, low consensus judgments concerning hypothetical
events and negative self-evaluations relative to others were associated with depres­
sion. These results are discussed in terms of related work on attribution theory and
social comparison processes.

THE ROLE OF ATTRIBUTIONAL VARIABLES in the etiology and main­

tenance of depression has been extensively investigated (Abramson, Selig-
man, & Teasdale, 1978; Brewin, 1985; Coyne & Gotlib, 1983). According
to various related theoretical approaches, attributional judgments of internal-
ity (the extent to which outcomes are perceived as being due to oneself or to
external circumstances), stability (the extent to which causes are present over
time), and globality (the extent to which they are present over situations) are
important determinants of depression in clinical and nonclinical populations.
More recently, Brewin and Furnham (1986) have demonstrated that pre-
attributional variables (or the antecedents of attributions as Kelley, 1973,
termed them) have an independent association with depression. They found
that the relation of depression to consensus judgments (the degree to which
negative life events were seen as more or less likely to happen to other people)

We would like to thank Emily English for her assistance in the collection of the dat
Requests for reprints should be sent to Adrian Furnham, Department of Psy-
chology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London, England WC1H OA

191
 192 Journal of Genetic Psychology

and consistency judgments (the frequency with which similar negative events
were seen as happening to the individual) was not attributionally mediated.
Specifically, seeing negative events as more likely to happen to oneself and
as more frequent was a more powerful predictor of both depression and low
self-esteem than were attributional judgments. The present study was de­
signed to replicate and extend the consensus findings to related aspects of
social comparison.
The fact that consensus judgments concerning events relate to depression
suggests the importance of the role of social comparison processes. Festinger
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(1954) argued that people have a basic need for self-evaluation, which they
obtain by using objective and internal standards when these are available or
by using other people as a standard when they are not. The theory is particu­
larly relevant in depression where there are no, or few, objective standards
against which to judge such things as "How happy am I?" or "How should I
feel about my life?" (Coates & Peterson, 1982). Others have proposed models
and theories that suggest that an individual's self-esteem is not based solely
on reference to internal standards but also on his or her perceived relations to
others (Gergen, 1981; Tesser & Campbell, 1983).
The way consensus information is used directly in self-evaluation via
social comparison processes can be contrasted with its more indirect role in
attribution theory. It seems possible that individuals making low consensus
judgments concerning life events also feel that they are characterologically
unique or different, as no one else seems to share their problems. Feelings of
uniqueness in the depressed have been investigated by Coates and Peterson
(1982), who asked their subjects to make simple, nonevaluative choices be­
tween, say, buying a book or buying a record. As predicted, depressed people
were more likely to see their choice as unusual and different from others',
and Coates and Peterson concluded that feelings of difference generalized
even to mundane, nonevaluative situations. Other evidence for this proposed
feeling of difference comes from a study in which the depressed rated them­
selves as unlike the average college student, even on nondepression-related
attributes (Tabachnik, Crocker, & Alloy, 1983).
People like to be unique in socially approved ways, but the opposite is
true for such things as illnesses or negative emotional experiences, where
most people prefer to believe they are normal. To cope with unpleasant affec­
tive events, people commonly resort to social comparison, often finding a
person who is apparently worse off than they are (Wood, Taylor, & Lichtman,
in press). This "downward comparison" may be difficult for the depressed,
because most people overestimate their level of satisfaction and avoid giving
any indication of unhappiness (Andrews & Withey, 1976). The depressed
may therefore become convinced that they are the only ones feeling that way,
which only serves to reinforce their feelings of difference or deviance.
 Furnham & Brewin 193

In this study, we investigated the relationship between depression and

two aspects of social comparison: consensus judgments for hypothetical
events, and perceived characterological disparity between self and an "aver­
age other." We predicted that judgments of consensus for events and the self-
other disparity measure would be positively correlated (low consensus being
associated with large disparities) and that depression would be correlated with
both measures.

Method
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Subjects
In all, 59 subjects took part in this study. There were 42 females and 16 males,
and the mean age was 20.6 years. All subjects were undergraduates taking
part in a compulsory practical class.

Questionnaires
Each subject completed three questionnaires in random order.

Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ). This questionnaire (Peterson et al.,

1982) lists six positive and six negative outcomes to 12 hypothetical events,
and subjects are required to make judgments about their most likely cause.
The ASQ is widely used in the study of depression and has been found to
have acceptable reliability and validity (Peterson & Seligman, 1984).
Subjects were also asked to make a consensus judgment about each event
based on the method of Brewin and Furnham (1986). In response to the ques­
tion "Would you say that an event such as this was more likely to happen to
you than to most people you know or vice versa?" subjects responded much
more likely to happen to them (1), slightly more likely to happen to them (2),
slightly more likely to happen to me (3), much more likely to happen to me
(4). All judgments were made on 4-point, forced-choice scales.

Self-Other Disparity Questionnaire (SODQ). This questionnaire (Furnham &

Osborne, 1986) consists of two randomly ordered, bipolar semantic differ­
entials of 20 scales each. Subjects are required to rate themselves and then
later their perception of the average other. This method of deriving a disparity
score has been used before, mainly looking at ideal/actual self disparity (Furn­
ham & Kirris, 1983; Furnham & Osborne, 1986).

Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). This 21-item inventory (Beck, 1976) is

one of the most widely used self-report measures. It has proven validity and
reliability with clinically depressed and normal subjects.
 194 Journal of Genetic Psychology

Results and Discussion

Self Perception and Depression

Table 1 shows the ratings for self and average other on each item and the
correlations of each with depression. There were 11 significant correlations
between self-ratings and the BDI, the highest of which were for insecurity,
unattractiveness, unintelligence, and boredom. Predictably, depressed sub­
jects had more negative self-images than nondepressed subjects. By contrast,
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only 3 of the 20 items on the average-other scale correlated with the BDI.
Depressed subjects perceived others to be more feminine, inhospitable, and
lazy.
A difference score was calculated based on the sum of the differences
between actual self and perceived other over the 20 items: S(AS - PO). The
correlation between the BDI and this difference score was .43, p < .01.

Attributions Style, Disparity, and Depression

The ASQ allows one to look at attributional style for both positive and nega­
tive events. Table 2 shows that in the case of positive outcomes only one of
the three attributional variables correlated with disparity or depression. The
internality dimension correlated with the disparity score (r = .25, p < .01),
indicating that the attribution of positive outcomes to the self was associated
with a positive evaluation of the self in relation to the average other. There
was a positive correlation between consensus judgments and the disparity
score (r = .30, p < .01), showing as expected that a high positive self-
evaluation was associated with the feeling that positive outcomes are more
likely to occur to oneself than to others. Also as predicted, consensus showed
a negative correlation with the BDI (r = - .25, p < .05), indicating that the
more subjects felt that positive outcomes were likely to happen to them (as
opposed to others), the less likely they were to be depressed.
The pattern of correlations for negative outcomes showed a more inter­
esting pattern. Self-other disparity was unrelated either to consensus or to any
of the attributional dimensions. As previously found, consensus had the high­
est correlation with the BDI (r = .26, p < .05), indicating that depression
was linked to the perception that negative events are more likely to occur to
oneself than to other people. Significant positive correlations were also found
between the BDI and internality (r = .23, p < .05), stability (r = .25,
p < .05), andglobality (r = .24, p < .05). Thus, depression was associated
with the feeling that the causes of negative outcomes are internal, stable, and
global.
The hypothesis of an association between the two aspects of social com­
parison—consensus judgments for events and self-other trait differences—
 Furnham & Brewin 195

TABLE 1
Item by Item Correlations for Actual Self and Average Other With BDI

BDI
With With
Rating scale Actual self Average other actual Self average Other

Secure - insecure 3.72 3.94 .62*** .07

Independent -
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dependent 2.74 3.98 .27** .05

Unreserved -
reserved 3.74 4.16 -.09 .20
Attractive -
unattractive 3.61 4.01 42*** -.13
Not hostile -
hostile 3.05 4.01 .18 .01
Masculine -
feminine 4.62 3.91 -.05 39***
Intelligent -
unintelligent 2.71 4.15 4g*** .05
Dominant -
submissive 3.32 4.06 .15 .08
Not resentful -
resentful 3.72 4.25 .14 .06
Friendly -
unfriendly 2.84 3.64 .01 .09
Mature -
immature 3.10 3.79 .30** .09
Not defensive -
defensive 4.61 4.57 .15 -.01
Non-neurotic -
neurotic 3.52 3.98 .35** .10
Unselfish - selfish 3.61 4.77 .23* .04
Hospitable -
unhospitable 2.91 3.71 .32** .30**
Hardworking -
lazy 3.07 4.10 .01 .23*
Interesting -
boring 3.27 4.13 40*** -.04
Honest -
dishonest 2.64 3.81 .36** .03
Sincere -
insincere 2.45 4.03 .19 .04
Warm - cold 2.269 3.89 .22* -.05

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***/? < .001.

 196 Journal of Genetic Psychology

TABLE 2
Correlations for Consensus and Attributional Variables
With Disparity Scores and Depression

Self-other
Outcome M disparity BDI

Positive
Consensus 15.55 .30** -.25*
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Internal 16.05 .25* -.15

Stable 14.03 .08 0.00
Global 14.69 .07 -.08
Negative
Consensus 14.50 -.06* .26*
Internal 14.29 -.08 .23*
Stable 12.79 -.12 .25*
Global 13.57 -.11 .24*

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

was confirmed for positive judgments. Thus, high positive self-evaluation

was associated with the perception that positive outcomes are more likely to
happen to oneself than to others. There was virtually no trend in the expected
direction for negative events, indicating that for the time being these should
be treated as distinct aspects of social comparison. To make consensus judg­
ments about events does not seem necessarily to imply anything about one's
character.
Consensus judgments concerning both positive and negative events cor­
related with depression in the predicted way. These results are in agreement
with Brewin and Furnham (1986), although in the present study consensus
judgements were not more strongly associated with depression than were at­
tributional judgments. One contributory factor may have been that Brewin
and Furnham (1986) used scales of a different format for the two types of
judgment, whereas in this study all judgements were made on similar 4-point
scales.
The most important conclusion to be drawn from these results is that
social comparison indices were consistently associated with depression. Once
again, this relationship appears to be independent of attributional judgments.
Social comparison theory may therefore constitute a viable alternative to
learned helplessness theory in the attempt to understand the onset and main­
tenance of depression. There is now considerable evidence that one of the
central features of depression is a negative or undesirable feeling of difference
or deviance from others, and it has been argued that these cognitions may be
responsible for the tendency of the depressed to avoid social contact and sup­
port (Brewin, MacCarthy, & Furnham, 1986).
 Fumham & Brewin 197

This study, like that of Brewin and Furnham (1986), used a nonclinical
student population. Frequently a gap has been found between normal, non-
depressed subjects and clinically depressed subjects, so that care should be
taken when generalizing from the results gleaned from one population to ex­
planations of the characteristics of the other. This gap may be of degree or of
kind—that is, the actual amount of difference or indeed the possibility that a
different process occurs. Only replication on a clinical population can answer
this, but there is probably enough evidence from clinical studies to suggest
that, if any differences between clinical and nonclinical populations are
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found, they are likely to be of degree rather than of kind.

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