The Role of Social Comparison Orientation and Tendencies in Iranian EFL Learner's Academic Achievement

Social Comparison is important as it can be either encouraging or discouraging for the person who makes it. Although studies concerning social comparison in the classroom context abound, few deal with the relationship between the role of social comparison orientation and tendencies in academic achievement in a competition based educational context. Adopting a non- experimental ex-post facto design, this study examines such relationship on 387 English Major Students studying in different Iranian universities in the academic year 2014- 2015. Data were collected through a modified version of Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM). The results, obtained through the statistical techniques of correlation and multinomial logistic regression, revealed that there is a significant relationship between social comparison and academic achievement. Moreover, the results indicated that high comparison orientation and upward tendency for students predict higher academic achievement, and low social comparison orientation and high downward tendency predict lower academic achievement. The findings call for further research on the underlying internal factors that lead to achievement and the similarity of individual's social comparison behavior in the classroom context, irrespective of culture and context.