In 1954, Leon Festinger published “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes,” the first formal treatment of the psychology underlying individuals’ tendencies to compare with one another. This ambitious work (which contained no less than nine hypotheses, eight corollaries, and eight derivations thereof) initiated a highly productive and influential line of conceptual development and psychological...

Psychopathy (PP) is associated with marked abnormalities in social emotional behaviour, such as high instrumental aggression (IA). A crucial but largely ignored question is whether automatic social approach-avoidance tendencies may underlie this condition. We tested whether offenders with PP show lack of automatic avoidance tendencies, usually activated when (healthy) individuals are confronted...

Insights from appraisal theories of emotion are used to integrate elements of theories on collective action. Three experiments with disadvantaged groups systematically manipulated procedural fairness (Study 1), emotional social support (Study 2), and instrumental social support (Study 3) to examine their effects on collective action tendencies through group-based anger and group efficacy. Resul...

Past research has provided abundant evidence that playing violent video games increases aggressive tendencies. In contrast, evidence on possible positive effects of video game exposure on prosocial tendencies has been relatively sparse. The present research tested and found support for the hypothesis that exposure to prosocial video games increases the accessibility of prosocial thoughts. These...

A total of 1,760 females and males were assessed for cognitive social comparison processes regarding physical appearance. Participants ranged in age from middle school (7th and 8th graders) to college juniors and seniors. Multidimensional scaling techniques were used as the analytical strategy. The results revealed the existence of two primary comparison dimensions: weight/non-weight and muscle...

The ability to control our automatic action tendencies is crucial for adequate social interactions. Emotional events trigger automatic approach and avoidance tendencies. Although these actions may be generally adaptive, the capacity to override these emotional reactions may be key to flexible behavior during social interaction. The present chapter provides a review of the neuroendocrine mechani...

background: social confidence is considered an important element in entrepreneurship. objectives: given the importance of employment and entrepreneurship of veterans, the present research aimed to determine the status of social confidence in veteran entrepreneurs of zanjan province. methods: in this survey. the statistical sample included all veteran entrepreneurs of zanjan province with an ent...

In social insects, substantial behavioral variation exists among individuals and across colonies. Here, we discuss the role of individual variation in shaping behavioral tendencies of social groups, and highlight gaps in our knowledge about the role of the social group in modulating individual behavioral tendencies. We summarize our knowledge of the genetic mechanisms underpinning these process...

Motivational tendencies to happy and angry faces are well-established, e.g., in the form of aggression. Approach-avoidance reactions are not only elicited by emotional expressions, but also linked to the evaluation of stable, social characteristics of faces. Grounded in the two fundamental dimensions of face-based evaluations proposed by Oosterhof and Todorov (2008), the current study tested wh...