At 9:30 p.m. on a weekday, you get on the subway home with your unfinished PPT. Just browse the circle of friends, and see that the old classmate's project has received a round of investment, and you hurriedly join the army of likes. But for some reason, the air in the cabin felt a little colder than usual.
Saturday was an auspicious day, when three friends clocked in at the marriage registry. "It's a good marriage!" "I wish a hundred years of marriage!" "When will you have wedding wine?" After leaving your message, you walked into the bathroom and inadvertently caught a glimpse of the half-pipe of facial cleanser she forgot to take when she moved out.
Anyway, whether you are willing to admit it or not, these days, whenever your friends share the good things in life, you are not really happy, but a touch of sourness will flow in your heart. Day in and day out, the sourness has grown into an indescribable self-doubt.
A fact that may be reassuring to you is that unless one cultivates to a state of transcendence, everyone has these kinds of emotions. According to psychologists, evaluating one's own thoughts and abilities accurately is a primary motivation of human beings. According to the social comparison theory put forward by American social psychologist Leon Festinger in the 1950s, people seek evaluation by comparing themselves with others, especially those who are close to themselves.
So when you blame your friends for not being pure enough, you may be ignoring that your friends are secretly envious of something you have. And it is precisely because you have shared experiences, are familiar and close enough, that you feel pressure from positive changes in each other's lives.
As secular people, we are destined to constantly compare ourselves with those around us to measure all aspects of ourselves, and then make corresponding adjustments in our actions. When we "compare up", we realize our own inadequacies and thus generate the motivation to improve ourselves, while "comparing down" increases our confidence and self-esteem.
However, this kind of psychological mechanism that is supposed to help us regulate our self-cognition is indeed more likely to tend to the “upward comparison” end in today’s age, misleading us to make biased judgments. In the talk show "Thirteen Invitation", the philosopher Chen Jiaying once said that the success anxiety of contemporary people has a great relationship with the high circulation of information. In the past, people lived in small social groups such as villages, communes, and work units, and thus had particularly many opportunities for success. But when our lives are connected to the world created by television and social networks, all eyes are on the most glittering figures in China and the world.
The flood of perfect idols and the pervasive penetration of social networks, on the one hand, lengthened the yardstick for our comparison, and on the other hand, lashed us into becoming more diligent self-image managers. This is not to say that the good news in the circle of friends is all false, but when "live well" and "live better than others" have become politically correct on social networks, the information about friends that everyone receives Information, all filtered and edited. The relationship between people has thus become a pressure point for systematic information asymmetry in the Internet age, and various forms of peer pressure, peer-to-peer friendship, and plastic friendship have evolved.
So, the next time you are irresistibly jealous of "other people's" children and partners, when you can't be happy for your friends' happiness, don't rush down and blame yourself, but try to reflect on whether you are caught in a fight The pseudo-contest of "who is better off"? Has it been a long time since you did the things that really made you happy because of this competition?
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