Who's on first? People asymmetrically attend to higher-ranked (vs. lower-ranked) competitors☆
Section snippets
Social comparisons in competitive rankings
Self-perceptions are generally formed by evaluating one's traits, skills, and abilities relative to similar, but slightly better-off, others (Festinger, 1954; Mussweiler, 2003). This is especially true when people lack objective metrics for self-assessment, but not as much when such quantifiable measures are readily available (Gerber, Wheeler, & Suls, 2018). One such context where quantifiable measures are available is competitive rankings, where absolute performance is translated into an
Asymmetric attention to higher-ranked individuals
We examine whether, unprompted, people attend to higher-ranked others and the consequences of doing so. Specifically, we examine whether people in competitive rankings asymmetrically attend to and have better memory for higher-ranked than lower-ranked others. Just as people are especially attuned to higher status others (Dietze & Knowles, 2016; Muscatell et al., 2012; Stellar, Manzo, Kraus, & Keltner, 2012), we argue that people pay asymmetrically more attention to those who rank higher rather
The moderating role of people's own ranking
Notably, whether people attend to their higher-ranked or lower-ranked competitors may be moderated by their own personal standing in the ranking (i.e., whether they rank at the top, middle, or bottom of the ranking). First, people typically compare themselves to familiar others (Corcoran & Mussweiler, 2009), especially those whose past performance is comparable to their own performance (Wheeler, Martin, & Suls, 1997) or who appear similar to them on various traits or attributes (Mussweiler, 2003
The consequences of asymmetrically attending to higher-ranked others
Asymmetrically attending to higher-ranked others may have important personal and societal consequences. Specifically, since selective attention impacts valuation and choice (Mrkva & Van Boven, 2017; Smith & Krajbich, 2019), disproportionately attending to higher-ranked others may lead people to rely more heavily on information gleaned from these higher-ranked competitors relative to lower-ranked competitors. Rather than attend to the entire distribution of their competitors, people may
Research overview
Seven studies (and five supplementary studies), examine whether people asymmetrically attend to and have better memory for their higher-ranked competitors. In addition, we investigate whether directing people's attention to their lower-ranked peers reduces this asymmetry in memory, and how one's position in the ranking affects the asymmetry. Finally, we examine potential implications of this asymmetry in two different contexts. Across all studies, we report all conditions run, exclusions, and
Study 1
We began by examining whether, even when they are not explicitly prompted to do so, people exhibit asymmetric attention to their higher-ranked competitors. To do so, we gave participants an opportunity to learn how their performance in a series of puzzles compared to their opponents. Rather than explicitly forcing participants to engage in upward or downward comparisons (as is done in the classic rank-order paradigm; Wheeler, 1966), we used a subtle and unobtrusive measure to surreptitiously
Studies 2a and 2b
Even when not explicitly instructed to actively choose who they want to compare themselves to (Wheeler, 1966), participants attended more to higher-ranked (vs. lower-ranked) others, and this was true regardless of whether the top performers were presented at the top, bottom, left, or right side of the screen. Moving beyond attention, we examined in Studies 2a and 2b whether people are more likely to remember their higher-ranked competitors. Indeed, various cognitive processes that are related
Study 2a
In Study 2a, using stimuli from a real-world competition, we examined whether higher-ranked competitors are more memorable than lower-ranked competitors. Specifically, we asked fans of the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament to recall all the teams slated to play in their team's regional bracket. Regardless of whether they rooted for a high-ranked (i.e., high seed) or low-ranked (i.e., low seed) team, we predicted that participants would recall a greater proportion of the teams ranked higher than
Study 2b
Because they attended more to them, participants in Study 2a exhibited significantly better recall for higher-ranked competitors. Yet, since top-seeded NCAA teams typically attract more media attention, such exposure may have advantaged their recall. To rule this out, we ran a conceptual replication in a controlled environment where, after seeing their and their peers' ranking, participants completed a surprise recognition task. As before, we predicted that participants would remember more of
Study 3
In a real-world setting, a controlled laboratory experiment, and a direct replication, participants exhibited far better recall for higher-ranked than lower-ranked competitors. Study 3 further examined this asymmetric recall by directly manipulating to whom participants attend. We argue that people exhibit better recall for higher-ranked competitors because they attend to them. Therefore, we predicted that drawing attention to lower-ranked competitors should improve people's memory for them
Study 4
Because participants were already more prone to attend to their better-performing peers, drawing their attention to their higher-ranked competitors had minimal impact on recall. In contrast, because they do not regularly attend to lower-ranked competitors, directing their attention to competitors that ranked lower than them significantly improved participants' memory and, as a result, reduced the asymmetry in recall.
Study 4 tested a potential boundary condition. Specifically, we examined
Studies 5a and 5b
Studies 1–4 documented a robust asymmetry in attention to rankings, which was moderated by participants' own standing in them. When participants were atop the rankings, they attended significantly more and had better memory for their higher-ranked versus lower-ranked competitors. In contrast, as they descended in the rankings, participants attended substantially less to their higher-ranked competitors. Whereas participants paid equal attention to their lower-ranked competitors regardless of
Study 5a
Study 5a examined how exposure to high-ranked females affects perceptions of overall female representation in competitions. To do so, we manipulated the distribution of higher-ranked (vs. lower-ranked) females in a competition while holding the total number of females constant, and examined people's memory for and perceptions of female representation. Although participants saw the same number of female competitors, we predicted that those exposed to more higher-ranked females would believe that
Study 5b
Study 5b examined how asymmetrically attending to higher-ranked others can impact decision making in another consequential domain: financial decision-making. We predicted that even when doing so may not be in their best interest, participants would be significantly more likely to emulate financial decisions made by higher-ranked others. That is, we predicted that asymmetrically attending to higher-ranked others would increase participants' memory for their investment decisions and,
General discussion
Given the ubiquity of rankings in daily life (Chun & Larrick, 2022), it is surprising how little is known about how people perceive and attend to them. Across seven studies (and five studies in the Supplementary Materials), using unobtrusive and subtle measures, we document an asymmetry in what people attend to in competitive rankings. Even when not explicitly prompted to do so, we find that people attend more to (Study 1) and remember information about (Studies 2a and 2b) higher-ranked
Conclusion
A colleague once lamented her job market misfortunes. Despite her strong performance on “the market,” this colleague kept ruminating on a few extremely successful colleagues, almost completely neglecting how better off she was than most of her struggling peers. Although attending to her better-performing colleagues clearly upset her, this colleague couldn't seem to help herself. Why are such “star performers” rarely satisfied with their own objectively superior performance? Our work suggests
Open practices
All materials, data, and analyses are available through the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/q73x8/?view_only=552205ded4ed4070bc4321568953b818. Studies 4 and 5a were preregistered and include links to their preregistrations in the study methodologies (https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=3qc28t, https://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=ci76ex); these preregistrations were completed prior to running the study and examining the data, and all deviations from preregistered analyses or protocol are
References (57)
- et al.
Easy, breezy, risky: Lay investors fail to diversify because correlated assets feel more fluent and less risky
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
(2019) - et al.
Goal gradient in helping behavior
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(2013) - et al.
Rankings, standards, and competition: Task vs. scale comparisons
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
(2007) - et al.
Losing sense of fairness: How information about a level playing field reduces selfish behavior
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
(2021) Preconscious effects of temporary goals on attention
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(2002)- et al.
Social status modulates neural activity in the mentalizing network
NeuroImage
(2012) - et al.
Cheating to get ahead or to avoid falling behind? The effect of potential negative versus positive status change on unethical behavior
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
(2016) - et al.
Holding your place: Reactions to the prospect of status gains and losses
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(2010) Toward a self-evaluation maintenance model of social behavior
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
(1988)Motivation as a determinant of upward comparison
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Supplement
(1966)
Related attributes in the choice of comparison others: It’s there, but it isn’t all there is
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Rankings and social tournaments: Evidence from a crowd-sourcing experiment
Rank incentives: Evidence from a randomized workplace experiment
Bad is stronger than good
Review of General Psychology
Stuck in the middle: The psychophysics of goal pursuit
Psychological Science
Performance reviews: Perilous curves ahead: Grading employees via forced rankings is a valuable management tool, say many companies
Diversity thresholds: How social norms, visibility, and scrutiny relate to group composition
Academy of Management Journal
The power of rank information
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The efficiency of social comparisons with routine standards
Social Cognition
The second pugilist’s plight: Why people believe they are above average but are not especially happy about it
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
There must be more to life than this: The impact of highly-accessible exemplars on self-evaluation and discontent
Self and Identity
The headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry: An availability Bias in assessments of barriers and blessings
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Why Most people disapprove of me: Experience sampling in impression formation
Psychological Review
A motivational framework of social comparison
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Social class and the motivational relevance of other human beings: Evidence from visual attention
Psychological Science
A theory of social comparison processes
Human Relations
More threatening and more diagnostic: How moral comparisons differ from social comparisons
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Risk behavior in response to quotas and contests
Marketing Science
Cited by (0)
- ☆
This paper has been recommended for acceptance by Joris Lammers.