"I Know People Who Do More": The Comfort of Downward Comparison

The thought arrives easily, usually in defense. Your partner mentions your drinking, and you think of Dave, who drinks twice as much. A friend suggests you use your phone too much, and you think of colleagues who are on it constantly. Compared to them, you are fine.

The comparison is reassuring. It is also completely irrelevant to the question of whether your own behavior is where you want it to be.

How downward comparison works

Wills proposed that people under threat to their self-esteem engage in downward comparison: they compare themselves to others who are worse off in order to feel better about their own situation [1]. The strategy is effective. It reliably improves mood and self-evaluation.

Festinger’s original social comparison theory described the human tendency to evaluate one’s own abilities and opinions by comparing them to those of others [2]. The theory was neutral about direction, but subsequent research found that when people feel threatened, they preferentially seek downward comparisons.

Research on individual differences found that some people are more prone to social comparison than others, and that the tendency is associated with lower self-esteem and more uncertainty about self-evaluation [4]. The more uncertain you are about whether your habit is a problem, the more appealing the downward comparison becomes.

A fictional example

The following is an illustrative example, not a real person’s story.

Maeve drinks a glass or two of wine most evenings. Sometimes three. She has noticed that mornings are harder, that her sleep is disrupted and that she reaches for the bottle earlier on bad days. When her sister comments, the thought is immediate: “You should see Sarah from work. She has a whole bottle every night and a gin before bed. I’m nothing compared to that.”

• What she thinks: “I’m not even close to having a problem. I know people who drink far more than me.”
• What she feels: Relieved. The comparison absorbs the anxiety.
• What she does: Pours another glass, because the comparison has declared it safe.

Maeve’s comparison is doing something specific: it is answering the question “do I have a problem?” by substituting a different question: “do I have as bad a problem as Sarah?” These are not the same question. The second one will always return a comforting answer, because there will always be someone worse off.

The norm problem

Research on perceived drinking norms found that college students consistently overestimate how much their peers drink, and that correcting these misperceptions with actual data reduced their own consumption [3]. A meta-analysis confirmed that perceived descriptive norms, what people think others do, are a significant predictor of one’s own drinking behavior [5].

The mechanism works in both directions. If you compare yourself to heavy users, your own use looks moderate. If you compared yourself to light users or non-users, the picture would be different. The comparison produces the conclusion. Change the comparison group, and the conclusion changes.

Maeve is not comparing herself to the general population’s relationship with alcohol. She is comparing herself to the heaviest drinker she knows. That is like checking whether you need a parachute by comparing yourself to someone who fell from a higher building.

The missing comparison

The useful comparison is not to someone else. It is to yourself:

• Compared to five years ago: Has the habit grown?
• Compared to your own standard: Is this where you want to be?
• Compared to the version of yourself without the habit: What would change?

Research on positive illusions suggests that people who maintain mildly inflated views of themselves tend to have better mental health [6]. A small amount of self-serving comparison may be healthy. But when the comparison is consistently used to avoid examining a behavior that is costing you something, it has crossed from adaptive to protective.

Questions to examine the thought

When “I know people who do more” arrives:

1. Would you give this advice to someone else? If your child said “my friend drinks more than me,” would you find it reassuring?
2. Who are you comparing to? Have you chosen the worst case you know? What if you compared to someone whose relationship with this behavior you admire?
3. What does your own trend line look like? Forget other people. Has your level increased, decreased or stayed the same over the last year?
4. Is the comparison answering the right question? “Am I as bad as them?” is not the same as “is this behavior at a level I am happy with?”
5. If you eliminated the comparison entirely, what would you think about your habit? Imagine you were the only person in the world who did this. Would the current level concern you?

Looking at yourself

The downward comparison will always be available. There will always be someone who drinks more, smokes more, spends more, scrolls more. That person’s existence tells you nothing about your own life.

The question is not where you rank. The question is whether this behavior, at this level, is serving you. That question does not require a comparison. It requires an honest look at what the habit is giving you and what it is taking.

For the pattern of minimizing the habit’s significance, see “it’s not that bad” and the quiet work of minimization. For the related argument that the habit is within normal bounds, see “everyone does it” and the appeal to social norms.

When to get more support. If you find yourself frequently comparing your behavior to people with more severe problems in order to avoid examining your own, that pattern is worth noting. A therapist can help you assess your behavior on its own terms, without the distortion of comparison. If the habit involves alcohol, your GP can offer confidential screening tools that measure your use against clinical criteria, not against your heaviest-drinking friend. In the US, call or text 988 if you are in crisis. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans are on 116 123.