Downward Social Comparison Increases Life-Satisfaction in the Giving and Volunteering Context

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• 作者：Yunhui Huang
• 关键词：Giving and volunteering ; Life ; satisfaction ; Downward social comparison
• 刊名：Social Indicators Research
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：January 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：125
• 期：2
• 页码：665-676
• 全文大小：440 KB
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• 作者单位：Yunhui Huang (1)
  
  1. Marketing & Electronic Business Department, School of Business, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China
  
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Social Sciences
  Sociology
  Quality of Life Research
  Microeconomics
  Public Health
  Human Geography
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-0921

文摘

Using samples of U.S. residents recruited from an online subject pool, this research confirms that charitable behavior is associated with higher life-satisfaction based on a retrospective survey (Study 1). Adopting experimental manipulation, we also find that participants report higher life-satisfaction after volunteering for a downward comparable target (i.e., the poor) than helping a non-comparable target (i.e., Wikipedia). But the above effect exists only among high social-comparison individuals (Study 2). Moreover, among people high in social comparison, comparing oneself with a downward comparable target without helping can lead to a similar level of life-satisfaction as helping the target. In contrast, participants who are low in social comparison achieve higher life-satisfaction when comparing themselves to rather than helping the target (Study 3). These findings suggest that charitable giving and volunteering contributes to life-satisfaction through allowing for downward social comparison.