Social Comparison Among Students in the School Environment and Its Impact on Mental Health
Description
A widely accepted idea in sociology is that individuals evaluate their position not only in absolute terms but also relative to others. During school years this process of social comparison is particularly strong, because academic performance and socioeconomic background become central dimensions through which young people assess themselves. Research has shown that comparisons affect self-esteem, feelings of belonging and future aspirations, while grades and material inequalities reinforce existing social hierarchies. Since adolescence is a formative period for identity and well-being, these relative positions can have a lasting impact on mental health during school years and in later life. Recent studies demonstrate that lower academic position (or rank) in school is linked to greater risk of psychological distress and subjective health problems. Yet, despite these insights, important knowledge gaps exist in understanding how relative position in school and peer comparison actually translate into long-term mental health issues. This is why this PhD dissertation project examines social comparison within the school environment and its effects on students’ mental health.
This project aims therefore to describe the mechanisms in school that shape which students’ mental health is affected through the social comparison. Previous studies have primarily examined academic performance, ranking students by grade point average or test-scores, and how that influences mental health. Yet, schools are not only institutions of learning but also central arenas for social formation. It is therefore unclear whether academic achievement is the most important dimension for these comparisons. Students may also evaluate themselves relative to peers based on the socioeconomic status of their parents. For instance, having relatively less financially well-off parents, compared to one’s peers, can foster feelings of relative deprivation, which may translate into poorer mental health. Similarly, parental cultural capital, such as educational attainment, may be a key source of comparison. Thus, there are an array of unanswered questions about the relative importance of these dimensions (academic performance, parental financial resources, and parental education) in shaping younger people’s mental health.
Worth mentioning is that one of the reasons why we need to study these mechanisms is that they differ in how much control students themselves have over them. Academic performance has both a genetic and an effort-based dimension: while ability matters, students can also improve their grades through persistence and hard work. By contrast, the financial resources of the parental generation are entirely outside the pupils’ control. In a school setting this creates a structural hierarchy where students are assigned positions by default, regardless of their own efforts. This structural dimension of comparison may therefore weigh heavily on how young people perceive themselves and their opportunities, in line with long standing cognitive theories. Understanding whether mental health inequalities arise mainly from effort-based or structurally fixed dimensions speaks directly to long-standing debates about equality of opportunity in education and societies.
This study will combine survey data with population-level data from Sweden and employ advanced statistical methods.
Dissertation supervisors: Prof. Hannah Bradby, Dr. Roujman Shahbazian and Prof. Sandra Torres (all at the Department of Sociology of Uppsala University)