Effects of employees’ social comparison behaviors on distributive justice perception and job satisfaction

We explored the effects of direction and frequency of social comparison on employees’ work attitudes. Full-time employees (N = 403) of 23 different organizations from various industries completed a paper-and-pencil survey. We found that people with a low core self-evaluation and a high performance approach tended to engage in social comparison frequently in both work-related and work-unrelated dimensions, and that these people generally reported lower levels of job satisfaction being mediated by distributive justice than other people did. Further, the relationship between comparison frequency and work attitude was moderated by comparison direction. Our study contributes to the social comparison literature by revealing the interplay between comparison frequency and direction, which influences employees’ work attitudes.