Social Comparison Orientations as Predictors of L2 Anxiety, Enjoyment, and Willingness to Communicate: Unraveling the Mediating Roles of Perceived Competence and Resilience

Learners in second language (L2) classrooms often evaluate their abilities in relation to their peers, yet the affective and communicative consequences of social comparison remain underexplored in second language acquisition (SLA) research. The present study, therefore, examined the relationship between four social comparison orientations (i.e., upward contrast, upward identification, downward contrast, and downward identification) and L2 anxiety, enjoyment, willingness to communicate (WTC), resilience, and perceived English competence. Accordingly, a total of 302 Iranian undergraduate English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learners were selected via convenience sampling and completed a set of self-report scales. The path analysis results revealed that upward-identification comparison positively predicted enjoyment and WTC, whereas the upward-contrast process positively predicted anxiety. The results also indicated that in the case of downward comparison, identification predicted higher anxiety and lower enjoyment, while contrast only predicted higher enjoyment. It was finally found that self-perceived competence and resilience mediated the relationship of specific comparison mechanisms with L2 anxiety, enjoyment, and WTC. Overall, this study advances understanding of the emotional and motivational mechanisms underlying social comparison in SLA and has implications for fostering students’ engagement and emotional well-being in language learning contexts.