a social influence analysis of perceived organizational support

identifies with and interacts with another individual who provides information to the first
individual regarding how he or she is treated by a third party, that information may serve as
signal to the first individual regarding how he or she is treated by the third party as well (Felson
& Reed, 1986). When the second individual indicates that he or she has been treated poorly by
the third party, the first individual will interpret this information as a signal that he or she has
also been treated poorly by the third party. Therefore, the first individual’s interaction and
identification with the second individual makes him or her believe that the treatment that the
other receives is indicative of the way that he or she is treated by the third party.
Social comparison can also lead to dissimilarity in perceptions when ego utilizes alter as
a point of comparison. Crosby (1984) argues that an individual will not evaluate how much of
an outcome s/he receives from a third party objectively, but instead base his/her evaluation on
how much of an outcome s/he receives relative to similar others. When an individual feels that
s/he does not receive as much of an outcome as another person, ego’s evaluation will become
less favorable, and as a result be dissimilar to the other person’s evaluation. This comparative
function would yield dissimilarity between the perceptions of the individuals with respect to the
outcome.
It seems that the associative and comparative functions present differing hypotheses
about whether social comparison will result in similarity or dissimilarity among individuals’
perceptions. However, self-evaluation maintenance theory (Tesser, 1988) presents a way to
integrate these seemingly different predictions by paying attention to the outcomes being
evaluated. The self-evaluation maintenance model is based on the assumption that individuals
want to maintain or enhance their self-evaluations. In some situations, an individual will “bask
in the reflected glory” of another similar individual who has succeeded. In these cases, an
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