Self-Evaluation Maintenance and Evolution

This chapter examines the intellectual gains that follow from asking whether SEM processes represent a specific adaptation to cooperative group living, and explores the heuristic potential of placing models of social comparison in an evolutionary framework.

Abstract

One model that has helped to guide research in which social comparison is central is the self- evaluation maintenance (SEM) model. In this chapter we attempt to place the model in evolutionary context. To do this we review the SEM model and some of its basic predictions. We then review some recent speculations regarding the origins of self-evaluative feelings. We also add our own speculation about a social performance ecology that may have emerged late in human evolutionary history and could plausibly have led to a sharpening of the comparison and reflection processes that are at the heart of the SEM model. The goal of this exercise is to explore the heuristic potential of placing models of social comparison in an evolutionary framework. Accordingly, we conclude by examining the intellectual gains that follow from asking whether SEM processes represent a specific adaptation to cooperative group living.