VU Research Portal Moving forward Mollee, J.S. 2018 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Mollee, J. S. (2018). Moving forward: Supporting physical activity behavior change through intelligent technology. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 12. Effectiveness of upward and downward social comparison of physical activity Abstract It has been established that social processes play an important role in achieving and main- taining a healthy lifestyle, but there are still gaps in the knowledge on how to apply such processes in behavior change interventions. One of these mechanisms is social comparison, i.e. the tendency to self-evaluate by comparing oneself to others. Social comparison can be either downward or upward, depending on whether individuals compare themselves to a target that performs worse or better. Depending on personal preferences, the variants can have beneficial or adverse effects. In this paper, we present the results of an experiment where participants (who indicated to prefer either upward comparison or downward compar- ison) were sequentially shown both directions of social comparison, in order to influence their physical activity levels. The results show that presenting users with the type of social comparison they do not prefer may indeed be counter-effective. Therefore, it is important to take this risk into account when designing physical activity promotion programs with social comparison features. This chapter appeared as: Julia S. Mollee and Michel C. A. Klein (2016). “The effectiveness of upward and downward social comparison of physical activity in an online intervention”. In: 2016 15th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications and 2016 8th International Symposium on Cyberspace and Security (IUCC-CSS). edited by Javier Garcia-Blas, Jesus Carretero, Indrajit Ray, Qun Jin, and Nektarios Georgalas. IEEE, pages 109–115 12.1 Introduction 213 12.1 Introduction Physical inactivity is a major public health issue. Evidence shows that it increases the risk of many health problems, including non-communicable diseases such as type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and mental illnesses (Lee et al., 2012). Consequently, physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of death globally (Kohl et al., 2012). Vice versa, engaging in sufficient levels of physical activity has been associated with effects on both physical and mental health (Conn et al., 2011; Eime et al., 2013; Reiner et al., 2013). However, a large part of the Western population does not meet the global recommendations of being moderately to vigorously active for at least 30 minutes per day on at least five days per week (Hallal et al., 2012). Therefore, healthy lifestyle promotion programs and behavior change interventions are a priority in most Western countries, in order to increase global physical activity levels. It has been established that social processes play an important role in achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle (Zimmerman and Connor, 1989). Several mechanisms that underlie these social influences have been identified, such as priming, social norms, behavior modeling, social facilitation and social support (Bandura, 1998; Cheng et al., 2014; McNeill et al., 2006), but there are still gaps in the knowledge on how to apply such processes in human behavior change interventions. Another mechanism that plays a part in behavior evaluation and behavior change is social comparison (Buunk et al., 2013; Festinger, 1954) , which is often applied in physical activity promotion apps as a form of providing feedback to the user (Middelweerd et al., 2014). Social comparison exists in two variants: downward social comparison and upward social comparison (Festinger, 1954), depending on whether the target (with whom one compares oneself) performs worse (i.e., downward) or better (i.e., upward) than the individual. Both variants can be effective and encouraging, for instance by boosting one’s self-view or by motivating improvement, but also counter-effective and discouraging, for instance by advocating inferior standards or by threatening the self-view (Corcoran et al., 2011). Therefore, it is important to carefully design interventions that incorporate a social comparison component. In this paper, we describe an experiment to test whether social comparison of physical activity via an online intervention leads to a measurable effect on the behavior of participants. More specifically, we investigate whether the direction of the presented social comparison (upward or downward) indeed yields two-sided effects on people’s physical activity levels, depending on the users’ indicated preference for one of these two variants. At the same time, the results of the experiment will indicate whether people are able to assess their own preference truthfully and effectively, according to the effects on their behavior. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 12.2 describes some background on social comparison theory. In Section 12.3, we describe the methods used to gather and analyze the data. The results are presented in Section 12.4, and reflected upon in Section 12.5. Finally, Section 12.6 closes the paper with a conclusion. 12.2 Background Social comparison is defined as the tendency to evaluate oneself through comparison to others, which is an important source of competitive behavior to self-improve (Garcia et al., 2013). In both upward and downward social comparison, people aim to attain or maintain a higher level of performance than others (Festinger, 1954). The desire to achieve or keep 214 Chapter 12. Effectiveness of social comparison on physical activity such a superior position is called a ‘comparison concern’ (Garcia et al., 2013). The model presented in (Garcia et al., 2013) shows that two sets of factors can encourage competitive behavior by raising such comparison concerns: individual and situational factors. Individual factors are those that may vary greatly between individuals, even if they find themselves in comparable situations. The three most important individual factors are relevance, similarity and closeness (Goethals and Darley, 1977). The more relevant a partic- ular dimension of performance (e.g., income, study results or sports achievements) is to an individual, the stronger their comparison concerns will be (Hoffman et al., 1954). Likewise, the more similar a target with whom one compares oneself is, the stronger the effect of the social comparison will be (Kilduff et al., 2010). Finally, the comparison concerns are also stronger when the individual and the target have a close personal relationship than when they don’t know each other (well) (Tesser and Smith, 1980). Situational factors are those that concern an individual’s perception of the surrounding social environment, by which means they can yield a more general effect on similarly situated individuals (Garcia et al., 2013). Several situational factors can contribute to one’s comparison concerns. For example, incentive structures (i.e., the incentives associated with the comparison) can encourage competitiveness when higher values are expected in case of better (relative) performance. Another factor is the proximity to a standard, i.e. whether an individual is close to the number-one position (or some other meaningful performance metric). The closer to such a standard, the stronger the comparison concerns are. The number of competitors also influences comparison concerns: the fewer competitors, the stronger the competitive behavior of individuals. A final example of a situational factor in social comparison is social category fault lines: when comparing to targets from other social categories (based on gender, nationality, etc.), the comparison concerns are stronger than when comparing within such categories. As mentioned in the Introduction, social comparison can involve a target (with whom one compares oneself) that performs better (i.e., upward) or worse (i.e., downward) than the individual. The two variants address different underlying motivational processes, implying different benefits and drawbacks. The main positive effect of downward social comparison is that comparing to a lower-performing target can boost the individual’s self-esteem and subjective well-being (Wills, 1981). On the other hand, downward comparison could also result in relatively low goals, since it doesn’t challenge an individual to try harder to minimize the discrepancy with someone else’s performance. The main benefit of upward social comparison is exactly that: it motivates people to self-improve in order to approximate better performing