Imagine that you were receiving feedback on something you had
worked on along with a colleague. Which of these two scenarios
would you prefer? - Scenario 1: You receive great feedback from
your supervisor, but your colleague receives even better
feedback. - Scenario 2: You receive really negative feedback
from your supervisor but your colleague receives significantly
worse feedback. On the face of it, Scenario 1 seems to be the
best situation; you are receiving great feedback rather than
negative feedback. However, in one study, certain people
experiencing Scenario 2 reported feeling happier and more self
confident than those experiencing Scenario 1. They would rather
do better than their peers even if it meant performing much
worse overall. Not everyone felt this way, though. In fact, it
was only people who reported themselves as being generally
unhappy who engaged in this social comparison. Happy people were
just pleased to get a good report and didn’t measure themselves
against other people. What makes som