Authentic presentation or false exaggeration? Exploring the effects of social- and personal-based comparisons from cognitive emotion theory

This study identifies the potential mechanisms to reveal the differential relationships between social- and personal-based comparisons and self-presentation and self-exaggeration. Specifically, drawing upon cognitive emotion theory, this study explores the relationships between two types of comparisons (i.e., social comparison and life dissatisfaction) and negative emotions (e.g., envy and shame), which further leads to self-presentation and self-exaggeration. The data analysis results based on a survey of 529 users from a famous social networking site indicate that (1) both social comparison and life dissatisfaction tend to arouse envy, whereas only social comparison tends to evoke shame; (2) self-presentation is positively associated with envy and negatively associated with shame whereas self-exaggeration is positively associated with both envy and shame; and (3) the relationship between self-presentation on self-exaggeration is moderated by perceived verifiability. Finally, we discuss the theoretical contributions and offer some practical suggestions.