Stepping back to see what matters: Psychological distance reduces diagnosticity neglect in social comparison

Abstract

People frequently compare themselves to others, and these comparisons have important affective and organizational consequences. Social comparisons differ in their diagnosticity—the degree to which they are attributable to features of the person versus the situation. While logic suggests people should give more credence to diagnostic than nondiagnostic comparisons, research shows they may overlook diagnosticity when comparing themselves to others. This tendency, termed “diagnosticity neglect,” can lead them to draw inaccurate conclusions about themselves. Here I test whether psychological distancing strategies can mitigate diagnosticity neglect. Because diagnosticity neglect may come from people’s tendency to overestimate the self-relevance of social information, adopting a distanced perspective may increase the salience of causal sources outside the self, thereby reducing diagnosticity neglect. Five experiments (three preregistered, total N = 4,008) test and support this prediction. Experiment 1 shows that people exhibit less diagnosticity neglect when imagining participating in an anagrams task than when actually doing so. Experiments 2 and 3 show that people who are prompted to take a distanced (versus immersed) perspective exhibit less diagnosticity neglect in response to a poorly attended birthday and unpopular social media post, respectively, and Experiment 4 suggests this effect is mediated by internal versus external attribution. Experiment 5 shows that this observation also holds for favorable comparisons. Overall, this research highlights interventions that may provide people a more balanced understanding of their place in the world and foster more healthier and more cooperative organizational cultures.

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