The purpose of this study was to examine the relations between social comparison orientation and academic burnout and to explore the moderating effects of ego-resiliency and social support on the relations between social comparison orientation and academic burnout of undergraduate students. The subjects of this study were 650 undergraduate students attending four-year universities located in Daegu, Busan, and Ulsan, Korea. Data were collected through questionnaires on academic burnout, social comparison orientation, ego-resiliency, and social support. To analyze the collected data, descriptive statistics, factor analysis, t-test, analysis of variance, hierarchical regression analysis, simple slope analysis, Johnson-Neyman technique were conducted by using SPSS 25.0 and Process Macro v.3.5.
The results of this study are as follows: First, ability comparison orientation affected emotional exhaustion and inefficacy. Opinion comparison orientation affected cynicism. Second, Ego-resiliency moderated the effect of ability comparison orientation on inefficacy. Third, ego-resiliency moderated the effect of opinion comparison orientation on cynicism. Finally, emotional and evaluative support moderated the effect of ability comparison orientation on inefficacy. However, informational and material support had no moderating effect on the relationship between social comparison and academic burnout.
In conclusion, this study indicated that the influence of social comparison orientation on academic burnout differs according to the level of ego-resiliency and social support. The social comparison orientation of individual undergraduate students affects the burnout phenomenon, but the level of burnout may differ depending on how they perceive the difference from the comparison target. The results of this study suggest that ego-resiliency and social support can function as an individual variable and an environmental variable that influences the perception of differences with others.