Lesson 2 of 6 · A measuring habit, and what the feed does to it
Everybody measures
Comparing yourself to other people is not a defect of character and it is not a sin you have been getting away with. It is how a mind works out where it stands.
If you want to know whether you are fast, there is a stopwatch. If you want to know whether you are doing well, patient enough, generous enough, far enough along for your age, there is no stopwatch. So the mind does the only other thing available to it. It looks at people.
This was described in 1954, long before any of the machinery you are worried about existed. It was not describing your phone. It was describing you, and your grandmother, and everybody before her.
What the research says
People need to know how they are doing, and where there is no objective measure they work it out by comparing themselves with others, preferring people similar to themselves. The urge is ordinary and everybody has it, so noticing you do it is not a character flaw.
People need to know how they are doing. Where there is no objective standard available, they work it out by comparing themselves with other people, and they prefer to compare with people who are similar to themselves. The drive is ordinary and it is in everybody.
Festinger L (1954). A Theory of Social Comparison Processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117 to 140 doi