The idea for this book derives from a research project developed by a group of social psychologists from the Social and Cognitive Psychology Laboratory (LAPSCO-CNRS) of the Université Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, France. It is a great pleasure for me to acknowledge the material and financial support received for this project from our laboratory and its staff, and from the ACI-Cognitique Program of the French Government in the form of a research grant. Most of the people that have contributed to this volume were associated with this project from very early on. Indeed, one of the stated objectives of the project was to develop research on social comparison processes through international collaborations. To this end, a first meeting was held in July 2002 in San Sebastian, Spain involving American, British, Belgian, Dutch, and French social psychologists, and a second meeting was held in Clermont-Ferrand in January 2004, involving American, Dutch, French, German, and Swiss social psychologists. These meetings provided unique opportunities to discuss theoretical and research issues, and these discussions were important to develop many ideas covered in this book.

I would like to thank all the contributors to this volume who have agreed to participate in this project. Their dedication and goodwill helped to turn hard work into nice times. I am grateful to Sandra Duarte and Magali Villate for their precious help during various phases of this project, to Jean-Léon Beauvois, Jean-Pierre Deconchy, Nicole Dubois, Gérard Lemaine, Jean-Marc Monteil, and Donald Taylor for inspiring discussions, and to Sarah Caro, Elizabeth Davey, and Laura Hemming from Cambridge University Press for their enthusiasm, professionalism, and support.

The temporal dimension of our life, as suggested by James (1890), appears to be an important key to understand and examine the present. Nonetheless, in presenting his theory, Festinger (1954) described the process of social comparison without taking into account the temporal dimension. Several years later, Albert (1977) pointed out that a theory of temporal comparison could be developed along the same line as that developed on social comparison. Albert's (1977) theory of comparison processes is a temporal translation of social comparison theory, in which processes that occur between different individuals at one point in time are assumed to apply to a single person comparing himself or herself at various points in time. The role of temporal comparison has received far less empirical attention than that of social comparison (Wedell and Parducci, 2000). Yet, recent research suggests that temporal comparison may often be more important psychologically than social comparison. Is it really the case? Is it possible to distinguish empirically processes of temporal and social comparisons, or are they always inter-related? What type of temporal comparisons are important, comparisons with the past or comparisons with the future? In order to start answering these questions, this chapter provides an overview of existing research on temporal-self comparison. We begin with the problem of defining a process of temporal comparison.

Fifty years ago, Festinger (1954) published a Theory of social comparison processes. Today, thirty-five social and cognitive psychologists who share a common interest in comparison processes combined their efforts to make this new book on the same topic a reality. Few theories in social psychology have stood the test of time as successfully as the theory of social comparison. Even today, major theoretical and empirical papers on social comparison processes are being published in the best scientific journals (for example, Buunk and Ybema, 2003; Markman and McMullen, 2003; Mugny, Butera, Quiamzade, Dragulescu and Tomei, 2003; Mussweiler, 2003; Spears, Gordijn, Dijksterhuis and Stapel, 2004; Stapel and Suls, 2004 and many others). How can one explain the tremendous amount of research that continues to investigate the psychological role of social comparison? What makes social comparison so important? These questions will be answered in the following chapters.

However, this book is not “only” about social comparison. It is also about social psychology.

After five decades of research revealing that relative deprivation (RD) is a central variable in the explanation of intergroup prejudice, recent research suggests that the opposite of RD, the relatively ignored relative gratification (RG), is also an important determinant of prejudice. This chapter summarizes both recent studies and current development in this line of research. After presenting several experiments that test the respective effects of both RD and RG on intergroup attitudes, we address the question of the ecological validity of the RG effect. By looking at South African data, we show that the effect of RG on prejudice is not merely a laboratory artefact, nor is it limited to the French intergroup context. Finally, in the last part, we focus more directly on the “understanding” dimension by testing both moderators and mediators of the RG effect.

Understanding intergroup conflict and the factors that contribute to stereotyping and prejudice is a fundamental problem that has attracted the attention of social psychologists for many years. This chapter examines a new theoretical perspective in the explanation of prejudice. This perspective suggests that Relative Gratification (RG), the complete opposite of Relative Deprivation (RD), is a powerful determinant of various forms of negative or hostile intergroup attitudes. In common with relative deprivation theory (Walker and Smith, 2002), social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1986), Equity Theory (Walster, Walster, and Berscheid 1978), and the five-stage model of intergroup relations (Taylor and McKirnan, 1984), this new perspective based on RG shares the assumption that social comparison processes are fundamental to an understanding of intergroup conflict (see Taylor and Moghaddam, 1994 for an overview of these theories).