the decrease in self-evaluation from comparison. One can spend less time with that particular individual, thereby reducing closeness or one can change their important self-definition and take up a new hobby or focus on a different self-defining activity, which reduces relevance (e.g. A siblings success in your favorite sport may lead you to stop playing). The third way of avoiding a decrease in self-evaluation through the comparison process is to affect another's performance (e.g. by hiding a sibling's favorite shoes, or believe that his/her performance was based on luck) or one can improve their own skills by practicing more. The conditions that predict whether an individual will interfere with another's performance in the sake of their own self evaluation include the closeness of the individuals and the relevance of the activity. When the relevance is high, the comparison process is more important than the reflection process. When the relevance is high and the activity is high in self-defining importance, the other person poses a larger threat than when the relevance is low. Mazar et al. (2008) investigated how self-concept maintenance applies to moral behavior. They found that participants engaged in dishonest behaviors to achieve external benefits up to a point. However, their need to maintain a positive view of themselves, as being honest, limited the extent of their dishonest behavior. Research Examples Tesser & Smith (1980) experimented with this theory. Men were recruited and asked to bring a friend with them. They were then put into groups of four, Man A and Man A's friend along with Man B and Man B's friend. Half the subjects were told that the study's purpose was measuring important verbal skills and leadership. This was the high relevance group. The other two subjects were told that the task had nothing to do with verbal skills, leadership or anything important. This was considered the low relevance group. The activity was based on the game Password, where persons have to guess a word based on clues. Each man was given an opportunity to guess the word while the other three gave clues from a list. The other three can give clues that are easy or difficult based on their own judgment and whether or not they would like to help the other person guess the word. The clues given to the person were necessary to guess the word. The first pair of partners performed poorly (as