People use social comparisons to reduce uncertainty when facing new or stressful situations. This study explores how a stressful experience, the COVID-19 pandemic, changed how people compare their income. It relates these changes to subjective well-being (SWB). We use a repeated cross-sectional dataset of students at two German universities from before and during the pandemic. A novel survey instrument is employed to identify individualized reference groups used for income comparison and to analyze whether the comparison pattern changed. Our results reveal that, while there was little change in the size of the reference groups, there was some difference in the group composition. During the pandemic, survey respondents were more likely to select two types of individuals into their reference groups: relatives and people they only knew from social media. Income comparisons were beginning to have a negative association with SWB, while the relation had been positive before the pandemic. Moreover, upward income comparisons increased.

当面对新的或有压力的情况时，人们利用社会比较来减少不确定性。本研究探讨了新冠肺炎 (COVID-19) 大流行这一充满压力的经历如何改变人们比较收入的方式。它将这些变化与主观幸福感（SWB）联系起来。我们使用了大流行之前和期间两所德国大学学生的重复横截面数据集。采用一种新颖的调查工具来识别用于收入比较的个性化参考组，并分析比较模式是否发生变化。我们的结果表明，虽然参考组的规模几乎没有变化，但组的构成存在一些差异。在大流行期间，调查受访者更有可能选择两类人作为他们的参考群体：亲戚和他们只通过社交媒体认识的人。收入比较开始与主观幸福感呈负相关，而在大流行之前，这种关系一直是正相关。此外，收入向上比较有所增加。