On Austen, Mansfield Park, and Social Comparison—Or How We Judge Ourselves through Others

If I were to ask you, "How is your life going?" chances are that, as you try to formulate an answer, you soon come to think of other people in an attempt to arrive at some kind of judgement. "Am I happy?"—I don't know, how happy are those around me? "Is my career going well?"—hmm, how successful are other people? Psychologically, it is difficult for us to judge how things are—including how we ourselves are—without making comparisons. We are quite poorly equipped to judge the state of things—including our lives—in absolute terms, and will often make use of various reference points. That is, we engage in comparisons to arrive at judgments. There are many ways in which we do this from a psychological perspective.

I want to focus here on one way in which we assess our lives and ourselves—our performance and accomplishments—namely, through social comparison. I recently read Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park (1814) and one passage stood out to me as a great example of her acuity in this regard. Austen is a great psychologist—I have previous written about some of the psychological insights to be found in her novel Persuasion (1817). Her understanding of human psychology has, I think, not been fully explored or credited yet. Throughout her works, Austen shows great awareness of and sensitivity to the ways in which social comparison operates and affects people's self-judgments. Before discussing the passage in question, it will be useful to say a little more about the concept and theory of social comparison.

tructurally, there are two general ways to think about social comparison. First, there is using the self—or one's own behavior—as a means to judge others. Does Jamie read much? Well, how much do I read? If I read significantly more than Jamie, then perhaps Jamie does not read much. If Jamie reads significantly more than I do, then perhaps Jamie reads much. Of course—neither of us may actually read much, say, when compared to another standard like the average amount that the average person reads. The point is that we frequently make judgments about others' behavior based on our own behavior. Our own behavior colors that of others. A similar idea underlies one of my favorite lines from Ivan Turgenev's play, A Month in the Country, which is more of an epistemological claim:

"That's the trouble, isn't it—we study ourselves intently, and then imagine we know other people."

It must be noted, however, that this put things rather negatively. Even though the risk of egocentrism and solipsism (the view that the self is all that can be known to exist) always lurks, the self is also a potentially highly valuable and positive source of insight. Sometimes, it is the only means at our disposal to think about other people; a kind of rough, general starting point. Empathy, sympathy, and many other other-regarding emotions are arguably based on a reflexive awareness of ourselves. For instance, on how we would feel, how we would want to be treated, and so on, when we take the well-being of other people into consideration. In fact, some fundamental ethical and religious imperatives—like the golden rule—depend on a person being able to think of one's self in order to think about others. Treat people how you would want to be treated. Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself. In these cases, we are asked to use the self and our own inclinations and desires as a standard by which to treat others (with all the potential good and all of the problems that this approach entails). Interesting as this first way of understanding social comparison is, I'll just leave it at this.

The second kind of social comparison is using others—or other people's behavior—to judge the self. Foundation work in this area was conducted by social psychologist Leon Festinger, who proposed social comparison theory in 1945. Incidentally, if the name sounds familiar, that is probably because Festinger also developed the theory of cognitive dissonance: the uncomfortable psychological state in which an individual experiences two incompatible cognitions or beliefs, which motivates the individual to act in such a way as to reduce the discomfort of dissonance. If you are interested in Festinger's work and the idea of cognitive dissonance, I would highly recommend the book When Prophecy Fails, which provides a very readable account of when Festinger, together with colleagues Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter, infiltrated a doomsday cult who believed that the world was going to end very soon, in order to study what would happen when—all too likely—the world would not come to an end.

Slight digression aside, I now want to discuss the passage from Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park, which struck me as neatly encapsulating the idea of social comparison in the second sense. First, a little background. Fanny, the novel's protagonist, has a brother—Edmund—who has just been promoted to lieutenant and is about to go off to sea. Edmund has been granted leave to go visit Fanny, his beloved sister, and wants to show off his new uniform; but, according to customs at the time, sailors were only allowed to wear their uniforms while on duty. Alas, no donning the new attire! Here is how Austen describes the significance of this disappointment: 

“So the uniform remained at Portsmouth, and Edmund conjectured that before Fanny had any chance of seeing it, all its own freshness and all the freshness of its wearer's feelings must be worn away. It would be sunk into a badge of disgrace; for what can be more unbecoming, or more worthless, than the uniform of a lieutenant, who has been a lieutenant a year or two, and sees others made commanders before him? So reasoned Edmund…”

Given Fanny's devotion to Edmund, she would probably love to see him in any kind of uniform, as long as he were happy. But that is the point: as happy as Edmund is now, in possession of his lieutenant’s uniform, he already knows that he will not be happy with it later. What Austen recognizes is that, for Edmund, who is trying to make a career in the highly hierarchically structured navy, is not going to be satisfied with being a lieutenant once other members of his cohort have made commander—no matter how proud and ecstatic he currently is about it. As soon as the novelty of the promotion wears off (already anticipated!), he will be looking to others around him and their station, which will determine how he comes to feel about himself.

There are two general directions of comparison when we compare ourselves to others. The case that Austen describes is one of upward social comparison—Edmund looks to those with superior achievements (rank) and come to feel less good about himself as a result, if he has not accomplished the same. Upward social comparison is common in capitalistic societies and seems to be rampant in our social media age. We scroll through social media and encounter a bunch of glamorous-seeming people who are apparently doing much better than we are, so we come to judge that our lives are really not that great. The upside is that this might motivate us to improve ourselves live—for instance, by working harder or living better—although the motivational power of upward comparison will depend on how realistic the targets are. Unrealistic achievements are more likely to demotivate and lead to daydreaming and inertia than useful activity. The social closeness of the others in question is also relevant. Other people's achievements can be personally threatening by challenging one's positive view of oneself. This can lead people to engage in motivated reasoning to minimize the relevance, magnitude, and importance of others' achievements so as to be able to maintain their positive view of the self (rather than admit, Heaven forbid, that some people simply are or have done better).

Social comparison can also be directed downward, when we compare ourselves to others who are less well-off than we are. This is often taken to lead to positive self-evaluations and a positive self-image. We look down to see our own, higher vantagepoint. It seems to me that, most commonly, people compare downward when they are in low spirits—when something bad has happened to us, when we are feeling particularly rotten about our lives. We can relativize, then, by observing others who have it worse than we do; and come to feel a little better about our own condition in the process. Perhaps this is part of much of the satisfaction that people seem to take on social media when some person has acted badly in some way, according to popular judgment, and is being punished, ridiculed, or ostracized for it. It is always good not to be that person. And, when other people are so clearly bad, what can we be but good for recognizing it?

It is probably inevitable that we think of other people when we try to judge ourselves and the state of our lives. We need points of reference; perhaps we even need some ideals. According to virtue ethics, based on Aristotle's ethical thought, exemplars of moral excellence are important for us to emulate. Be that as it may (I do think that it is important to have and to recognize good moral examples), I cannot help but think of what Albert Camus writes in his novel The Fall:

"Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape."