With the rapid development of cognitive neuroscience methodologies, research on social comparison has become a focus of social and affective neuroscience. This article reviews the latest cognitive neuroscience studies regarding the neural mechanisms underlying social comparison. We start by outlining the basic concept of social comparison and describing the classic theory,and then summarize and discuss the neural basis of different aspects of social comparison,namely with regard to competence,resource control and affective connection,psychological distance. On one hand,downwards social comparison processes are accompanied by positive emotions,which correspond to the regions of ventral striatum (VS) - the brain area involved in reward circuitry;on the other hand,upwards social comparison processes are accompanied by negative emotions,which implicate the areas of dorsal anterior cingulate cortex(dACC) and insula—regions typically related to the processing of social pain and negative stimuli. Moreover,brain regions involved in mentalizing,such as medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC),precuneus,posterior cingulated cortex (PCC),temporoparietal junction (TPJ),are also involved in the processes of social comparison on following actions. Finally,we review studies of individual and culture differences in relation to social comparison and propose a path for future research directions in this domain.