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Leon Festinger's Social Comparison Theory Essay

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Leon Festinger was an American social psychologist who is known for two theories; cognitive dissonance and social comparison theory. He was born on May 8, 1919, in New York City to parents Alex and Sara Festinger. Festinger’s father left Russia an atheist and never changed when he settled. His father’s personality had some influence on him since many of Festinger peers would have described him as an aggressive yet a critic child (Gazzaniga, 2006). While in New York City, he attended Boys ' High School and then City College. He received his master’s and Ph.D. at the University of Iowa State University. Originally, Festinger had no interest in social psychology and his focus was on child behavior (Schachter, 1994).
While Festinger was at Iowa …show more content…

As humans, we are always judging ourselves and others. This theory is how someone will compare themselves to others on a regular basis; an example of this would be looking at someone’s photos and comparing your body to theirs.
Festinger (1954) believed that there are three hypotheses to his social comparison theory. The first hypothesis is “there exist, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and abilities” (Festinger, 1954) which is described, as that an individual will compare themselves to another person in the room that they believe they are at the same level of self-worth. If the certain individual realizes that they do not match up, they will find another one and do the same thing over again. Once the individual feels satisfied with feeling good about them, they will move on completely.

The second hypotheses are “to the extent that objective and non-social means are not available, people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing respectively, with opinions and abilities of others” (Festinger, 1954) which is described as is if the individual cannot compare themselves to someone and feel satisfied they will just form a subjective opinion. Regardless if the opinion is true or not, it cannot be proven in the real world because it is the individual opinion

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