Is every comparison a thief of joy? Polish validation of the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure and the indirect role of social comparisons in the relationship between emotional stability and the impostor phenomenon

Social comparisons play an integral role in shaping people’s self-perceptions and how they view their accomplishments. The first purpose of our research was to introduce a Polish version of a social comparison measure. The second aim of our studies was to examine the indirect effect of frequent social comparisons — both ability and opinion-related — in the relationship between emotional stability and the impostor phenomenon (IP). Through two studies with a total of 1,466 participants we examined the factor structure of the Polish Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM-PL). The results of the confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) supported a two-factor solution of ability and opinion comparisons. The scale showed scalar measurement invariance between men and women. In Study 1 (N = 465), we validated the INCOM-PL and found that social comparisons negatively correlated with age and self-compassion, and positively with maladaptive perfectionism. In Study 2 (N = 1,001), we found an indirect effect of ability, but not opinion comparisons, in the relationship between emotional stability and IP. This suggests that people low in emotional stability tend to frequently compare their abilities with others, which in turn may reinforce their self-perceived intellectual phoniness. Conditional process analysis revealed that these effects were independent of participants’ gender. Our findings point to a potentially promising direction of targeting maladaptive patterns of social comparisons in interventions aimed at reducing the IP.