Seeking to Please

For purposes of this posting, let’s presume that most people prefer to be liked, accepted, or, at least, tolerated. That begs the question, “By whom?”  Who is the person or persons who determine your worth?: family? friends? neighbors? co-workers?  Do you believe that all the valued ones want to see the same attitudes and behaviors from you?  When their expectations conflict, which, if any, members of the multitude exert the greatest influence?

Where are you, yourself, in the “how to be” equation?  When you realize that someone or some group expects you to exhibit a particular attitude or behavior, do you start with them or start with you?  What parameters do you apply when attempting to reach your conclusion?    Equally important, what parameters do you ultimately apply when acting upon your decision?  If your decision and/ or action is contrary to expectations of valued others, do you explicitly address the discrepancy or not?

Of course, you rightly can reply that your decision and/or action “depend” on specifics of the situation.  True, but, in that case, you would do well to understand what contextual features are determinative for you and when.

Focusing on others vs. on oneself has many potential implications. Here we only consider influences on our self-regulation (how we manage our feelings and self-esteem) and our motivation as reported by Diel, Grelle, and Hofmann (2021).  The study included 5400 subjects who were presented with everyday scenarios that required them to compare their personal standards with others’ standards.  Would they make their decisions primarily by looking within themselves or by looking to others?

The answers depended on the value they ascribed to how they perceived self-others discrepancies. One group of subjects engaged in “upward comparison” by which they saw others’ standards as “better” than their own.  Many of these persons pushed themselves to reach that higher standard of others but some did not.  The latter had made extreme demands of themselves and soon gave up when failing to achieve their unreachable goals.  Failure within that group was all the more disappointing for a subgroup who perceived that they had strong personal control within the presented situation or when they strongly valued that situation. 

Another group of subjects engaged in “downward comparison” by which they saw their own standards as “better” than those of others.  Such people were generally more content with their performance in the presented situation than were the upward comparison group.  On the other hand, the downward comparers put forth less effort in attempting to satisfy the expected standards.

So, what might this mean for you?  How much of your self-regulation and motivation are strongly or primarily determined by what you believe others prefer or by what you independently prefer?  But before you answer those questions, consider an issue that I have saved for last.  Maybe in addition to, or in lieu of, family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers, there are “remote” others that strongly influence your self-regulation and motivation.  For instance, do so-called identity leaders that reach you via media—for example, celebrities, politicians, and “tribal” group trendsetters—exert such powerful effects that you want to believe and act in ways consistent with them?

Important, too, is the possibility that identity leader influences steer you so automatically and unconsciously that you do not even personally consider what they are presenting, but rather, you mindlessly adopt their positions without personal reservation or deliberation.  You might also upwardly or downwardly compare yourself to the identity leaders with negative implications for your self-regulation and/or motivation. 

In sum then, be on guard against mindlessly, uncritically allowing your attitudes and/or behaviors to be altered by family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers whose knowledge in any given area is no more informed than yours.  And be exponentially more guarded when uninformed and/or agenda-driven identity leaders try to sway you toward their positions.

 

Reference

Diel, K., Grelle, S., & Hofmann, W. (2021). A motivational framework of social comparison. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(6), 1415–1430. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000204