Social Compensation: Fact or Social-Comparison Artifact?

Abstract

The use of coactors as non-group controls in prior social compensation research has left open the possibility that the effect might artifactually have resulted from a confound between work condition (Coaction vs. Collective) and the opportunity to make performance comparisons. A direct empirical test of this alternative, artifactual explanation is reported. Its results contradict that explanation and suggest that the use of coactors as controls has, if anything, resulted in an underestimation of the magnitude of the social compensation effect. It is argued that multiple alternative non-group performance baselines can be informative for analyzing group motivation effects.