Why are people 'Lying Flat'? Personal relative deprivation suppresses self‐improvement motivation.

The 'Lying Flat' mindset refers to people's low intention to self‐improvement. We hypothesized that personal relative deprivation (PRD), the negative consequence of social comparisons, is one of the reasons that might harm individuals' self‐improvement motivations. In study 1 (N = 313), we found that PRD negatively predicted self‐improvement after controlling for various confounding variables. This result is confirmed in study 2a (N = 3399) and 2b (N = 3219) by using a national representative sample. Furthermore, Study 2a found that the effect of PRD on self‐improvement was mediated by the system‐justifying belief (SJB). In study 3 (N = 160), we experimentally demonstrated that PRD harms self‐improvement and persistence via its effect on SJB. The higher PRD people experienced, the less they endorsed the SJB, which thereby reduced self‐improvement. Taken together, this research manifested that not only would PRD affect people's social beliefs (e.g. SJB) but also hinder self‐improvement motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]