The Effect of Comparative Direction and Comparative Gap on Self-Deception

Purpose: Self-deception refers to an individual holding inflated beliefs about their abilities, plays a crucial role in human behavior and decision-making. Individuals may inflate their abilities when subject to comparisons with others. This study examined the impact of social comparison on self-deception through the implementation of two behavioral experiments.
Methods: In Experiment 1, we recruited a sample of 152 undergraduate students. Participants were falsely informed that they performed better (downward comparison) and worse (upward comparison) than average on a game. Subsequently, their level of self-deception was assessed by asking them to predict their performance in a future game, with more inflated predictions indicating greater self-deception. In Experiment 2, we gathered 126 undergraduate students to broaden the current study. This experiment examined the combined effects of comparison direction and comparison gap on self-deceptive behavior.
Results: The findings showed that self-deception was more common in circumstances of upward comparison than in downward comparison or no comparison (Experiment 1). Furthermore, Individuals were more inclined to participate in self-deception when encountering a notable performance gap relative to others, particularly in scenarios involving upward social comparison (Experiment 2).
Conclusion: The findings suggested that when confronted with threatening social comparative information, people tended to use self-deception to protect themselves. Members of the large gap group experienced strong feelings of unfairness and negative emotions, which led to self-protective behaviors and a greater likelihood of self-deception.

Keywords: comparative direction, comparative gap, self-deception, self-protection, social comparison threat