Notes on: How Can We Avoid Social Comparison?

'How Can We Avoid Social Comparison?' is taken from the course 'Managing Happiness,' by Arthur Brooks on edX.org.

"Comparison is the thief of joy." - President Theodore Roosevelt

Medals and Happiness Levels

In 1992, they did a study on Olympic medal winners to match medals with happiness levels.

As expected, those who received gold had the highest levels of happiness, but what was surprising to find is that those who received a silver medal were less happy than those who received a bronze medal. Why?

The silver medalists compared themselves with the gold medalists, but the bronze medalists were just happy to be on the podium.

Years later, another study looked at the age of hundreds of Olympic athletes at their death and bronze medalists lived the longest, followed by gold, and silver had the shortest life expectancy.

Avoiding Social Comparison

Our blood oxygen levels in our ventral striatum, which is the reward processing part of our brains, fluctuate when we engage in social comparison.

When we compare ourselves to someone less fortunate, our reward system lights up, and we feel a brief rise in happiness, but when we compare ourselves and feel worse off than someone, our happiness is depressed much more severely and it lasts longer.

Overall, social comparison is a net negative and although may seem to be useful at times, it should generally be avoided.

Three strategies to help you not compare yourself to people who have more than you:

1. Just keep trying. Be conscious of when you do it and make an effort to stop. When you do find yourself comparing then remind yourself that it will likely make you unhappy and not help you in any way. This will get easier over time.

2. Exercise gratitude. Being grateful for what you have will help you combat the distraction of what you don't have.

3. View surprises as opportunities. When you receive positive surprises, take time to enjoy them, but when you receive a negative surprise, reframe the circumstances as an opportunity to learn.

"Let us enjoy what we have without making any comparisons. A man will never be well off to whom it is a torture to see anyone better off than himself." - Seneca the Younger