# The Social Comparison Rumination Scale: Development, Psychometric Properties, and Associations With Perfectionism, Narcissism, Burnout, and Distress

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new scale to measure how much people ruminate on social comparisons and links it to traits like perfectionism and narcissism.

## Contribution

The paper introduces the Social Comparison Rumination Scale, a novel psychometric tool for assessing persistent thoughts about social comparisons.

## Key findings

- The SCRS is a reliable and valid one-factor measure with high internal consistency.
- Social comparison rumination is associated with perfectionism, burnout, depression, and fear of negative evaluation.
- The tendency to ruminate on social comparisons is linked to narcissism and dispositional envy.

## Abstract

In the current article, we describe the development and validation of the Social Comparison Rumination Scale. This measured was developed as a supplement to existing social comparison measures and to enable us to determine its potential relevance to perfectionism and other personality constructs. The Social Comparison Rumination Scale (SCRS) is a six-item inventory assessing the extent to which an individual is cognitively preoccupied and thinking repetitively about social comparison outcomes and information. Three studies with five samples of university students are described. Psychometric analyses established the SCRS consists of one factor assessed with high internal consistency and the measure is reliable and valid. Analyses showed that elevated levels of social comparison rumination are associated with trait perfectionism, perfectionistic automatic thoughts, perfectionistic self-presentation, ruminative brooding, burnout, depression, and fear of negative evaluation. Links were also established between social comparison rumination and both narcissism and dispositional envy. Overall, our findings support the further use of the SCRS and highlight the tendency of many people to think in deleterious ways about social comparisons long after the actual comparisons have taken place. We discuss social comparison rumination within the context of concerns about excessive social media use and young people being exposed to seemingly perfect lives that became a vexing cognitive preoccupation.