Question

Reflect on a time from your childhood when direct definitions, identity scripts, or attachment styles left a big impact on your self-identity. How did the experience shape your perception of who you were at the time? Have those same self-perceptions become a major part of how you think about yourself now or have other experiences reshaped your identity to its current state? How does social comparison theory play out in your professional and personal life? Which type of comparison do you find yourself making most often (similarity/difference, upward, downward)? What impact does social media have on social comparison?

Answer 1

I was born in Seoul, South Korea and was adopted when I was 6 months old. The story goes that my biological mother had a sixth-grade education, and my biological father had an eighth-grade education when my "mother" became pregnant with me. Supposedly, my "father" went back to school at that point to try to get a better job to support his family and was killed in an accident there. Being left on her own, with such a limited education, the orphanage had said that I had been left on their doorstop with very little family information. My adopted parents (my parents), are Caucasian and I have been very fortunate to have become a part of their family. It took me a long time for me to see my adoption as anything more than an abandonment. However, I do now see that it wasn't a lack of unconditional love that forced a mother to walk away from her child, but rather a hardest form of actual unconditional love that allowed her to give me a chance at so much more.

I spent my early childhood years in a home on Main St. in Dover,Massachusetts. One of Boston's finest brain surgeons, Dr. Tom Thornhill lived across the street from us and I remember always envying all of my friends who had fathers that were lawyers and doctors with their summer home in the Hampton's and gigantic mini-mansion estates. My mother has told me that the reason we moved in the third grade was because I could not comprehend why we couldn't ever live like everyone else. My parents have done well for themselves considering neither one of them came from any type of family money. The way my parents live so frugally, refuse to self-indulge and how they save, save, and save is a quality that I will always envy in them. It is a virtue that I know nothing about. So, our Volvo and our two-story home sitting on the 2-acre lawn that my father mowed himself, was not what everyone else had; it was not what I wanted. Not only did I stick out because I was the only Asian child amongst a community that was 99% white, but now we were also the only ones without a country club membership and I was the only one who had a mother that actually worked and did not bake cookies for the PTA committee. I remember that it was me and one other African American girl that were the only minorities in the entire elementary school. It is interesting how our minds retain certain details from our childhood.

Now as an adult, in my personal life, I believe I still tend to exhibit upward comparison tendencies in part to develop my self-image. Despite the commonly negative effects of upward comparisons, it can sometimes be useful because it provides just enough of a healthy competition; sparks a motivation in me that helps me believe that I can do better at something. In my professional surroundings, upward social comparison helps me imagine myself as a part of the group of “successful” people or “big shot players” of the team. As long as I am able to control the extent that I allow my self-image to be challenged, and remember to compare positively and productively rather than with an ego-scarring jealous mentality, I can counter any negative feelings and decrease of my self-esteem. In short, despite the negative effects of upward comparison, it is quite possible to establish a strategy for preserving self-esteem in the face of a wide variety of challenging life situations. Glass half full rather than half empty.