Impact of Social Comparison on Anti-social behavior among Young Adults: Mediation by Malicious Envy

Abstract

The present study was aimed to investigate relationship between social comparison and anti-social behavior among young adults. This study also aimed at explaining the mediating role of envy between social comparison and anti-social behavior among young adults. Data was collected on social comparison Scale (Allan and Gilbert, 1995), Sub type of anti-social behavior scale (Burt and Donnellan, 2009), Benign and Malicious Envy Scale (BeMaS) by (Lange and Crusius, 2015) and translated into Urdu language by (Shakeel et al., 2023). A total of 450 university students between the ages of 18 and 30 from Rawalpindi and Islamabad made up the sample; their mean age was 22.45 years, and their standard deviation was 3.16 years. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the structural validity of the instruments, and Chronbach's Alpha was used to determine reliability. The reliability and structural validity indices of all three scales were good. The Pearson correlational analysis revealed that when adults involve in upward social comparison it will increase feeling of malicious envy and anti-social behavior. In order to perform the mediation analysis, process macro was used. The latent variable social comparison appears to have a significant positive indirect effect on Anti-social behaviors through malicious envy. It is concluded that social comparison predicts anti-social behaviors by effecting the malicious envy.  It is recommended that anti-social behaviors may be reduced directly by addressing nature and purpose of social comparison and indirectly by identifying and mitigating feelings of malicious envy.