Meta-Analysis of Online Social Comparison and Psychological Maladjustment

A meta-analysis synthesizing 94 effect sizes from 54 independent samples, totaling 36,583 participants, to examine the link between upward social comparison on social media and psychological outcomes. The research was conducted by Yuqing Lei and published on figshare in May 2026. It found an average correlation of r = 0.330, with the strongest link to social-evaluative negative emotions.

Use Cases

• Analyze the average association between upward social comparison and psychological maladjustment based on the reported meta-analytic correlation.
• Compare the strength of associations across different outcome domains (e.g., depression, anxiety, self-esteem) based on the results.
• Investigate potential moderators like age or cultural background based on the study's findings.

Strengths

• Aggregates data from 54 independent samples with a total of 36,583 participants, providing a substantial evidence base.
• Reports specific average effect sizes (e.g., r = 0.438 for social-evaluative negative emotions) for different psychological outcome domains.
• Employs a three-level random-effects meta-analytic framework to model dependence among effect sizes.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for direct data analysis.
• The dataset is a 1.4 MB ZIP file; its scale is small and may contain only summary statistics rather than raw study data.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Meta-analysis synthesizing published and unpublished studies.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-15 05:42:51; freshness should be verified.