Social comparison orientation and trait competitiveness: Their interrelation and utility in predicting overall and domain-specific risk-taking.

In accord with Festinger (1954) and Garcia et al. (2013), we investigate the understudied link between social comparison and competition. Specifically, in two correlational studies using university undergraduate (N = 298) and adult worker (N = 645) samples, we used path models to test relations between two types of social comparison orientation (SCO-ability and SCO-opinion), trait competitiveness (TC), and both overall and domain-specific risk-taking. The findings were largely consistent across studies, with some variation within risk-taking domain. SCO-ability positively predicted TC, but the reciprocal relation was not observed. SCO-ability positively predicted overall risk-taking and risk-taking in the ethical, gambling, and health/safety domains across studies (and social-investment risk-taking for adult workers). TC was also an independent positive predictor of overall risk-taking and ethical risk-taking (and social-investment, gambling, and health/safety risk-taking for adult workers). Mediation analyses showed that TC partially mediated the relation between SCO-ability and both overall risk-taking and ethical risk-taking across studies (and social, gambling, and health/safety risk-taking for adult workers). SCO-opinion exhibited few consistent links to risk-taking. This research furthers integration of the social comparison and competition literatures, and expands the literature on antecedents of risk-taking behavior. • Social Comparison Orientation (SCO) was related to trait competitiveness (TC). • SCO-ability positively predicted TC and the reciprocal relation was not present. • SCO-ability and TC positively predicted overall and domain-specific risk-taking. • TC partially mediated the relation between SCO-ability and risk-taking variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]