How we view and evaluate ourselves is thought to play a crucial role in our well-being and in the development and maintenance of psychopathology. Drawing upon information from memory and our current environment, judgment is relative to comparison standards. Therefore, self-construction is subject to contextual and situational influences. Social comparison is the most salient and most-widely researched standard informing self-construal. Yet, the complex effects of social comparison are still not well understood. The research presented in this symposium aims to systematically investigate the comparison process and its components, as well as its affective, cognitive and
behavioural consequences. Our contributors draw on a wide array of experimental paradigms, including false feedback manipulation, trauma film exposure, comparison orientation interventions, comparison sample manipulation, and a novel paradigm displaying the (mis)fortunes of others. They report effects of social comparisons on a variety of outcomes, including on self-and other-judgments, positive and negative affect, envy and schadenfreude, prosocial behaviour, cognitive orientation, goal-directed action and psychological distress. Together, our research on comparison processes addresses questions from the areas of social psychology, sports psychology, neuroscience
and psychopathology, for which we will consider translational implications.