# Social Comparison without Explicit Inference of Others' Reward Values: A Constructive Approach Using a Probabilistic Generative Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.18687 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.18687/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [InfoVAE: Information Maximizing Variational Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02262/) (2017)
- [Symbol Emergence in Robotics: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.08973/) (2015)
- [SERKET: An Architecture for Connecting Stochastic Models to Realize a Large-Scale Cognitive Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.00929/) (2017)
- [Constructive Approach to Bidirectional Influence between Qualia Structure and Language Emergence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.09413/) (2024)
- [Survey and Perspective on Social Emotions in Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09647/) (2021)
- [Study of Emotion Concept Formation by Integrating Vision, Physiology, and Word Information using Multilayered Multimodal Latent Dirichlet Allocation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.08295/) (2024)
- [neuralFOMO: Can LLMs Handle Being Second Best? Measuring Envy-Like Preferences in Multi-Agent Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13481/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Social comparisonunicodex2014the process of evaluating one's rewards relative to othersunicodex2014is an essential feature of social emotions such as envy and plays a fundamental role in primate social cognition. However, it remains unknown how information about others' rewards affects one's own reward valuation. This study examines whether monkeys merely recognize objective differences in reward or instead infer others' subjective reward valuations. To address this issue, a constructive approachunicodex2014one that replicates target emotions in artificial systems and extracts knowledge from themunicodex2014was employed, owing to its potential to simulate how the monkey interacts with social contexts, specifically social comparison. We developed three computational models with varying degrees of social information processing: an Internal Prediction Model (IPM), which infers the partner's subjective values; a No Comparison Model (NCM), which disregards partner information; and an External Comparison Model (ECM), which directly incorporates the partner's objective rewards. We trained the models on a dataset containing the behavior of a pair of monkeys, their rewards, and the conditioned stimuli, and then evaluated the models' ability to classify subjective values across pre-defined experimental conditions. The ECM achieved the best classification result (0.88 for the ECM vs. 0.85 for the IPM on the Rand index), suggesting that, in our modeling framework, social comparison relies on objective differences in reward rather than on inferences about subjective reward values.