The act of people forming groups and carrying out coordinated actions against an individual is the core of social comparison. If the threat of other people’s coordinated group activity against you didn’t exist, no one would care about comparing themselves against others (to accumulate wealth or status symbols for protection). There’s no internal impetus to improve if survival is guaranteed, regardless. On average, people seek low energy and least resistant paths, unless there’s a pressing concern not to do so. I guess it depends on the individual, neurodivergent people don’t follow the same set of cognitive rules.

> It tends to occur unconsciously, with most people unaware that they are making such judgments.[3]

Skimming the cited source, it's two diary studies (n=~30) from some university where students only log conscious comparisons... 'finding' that <10% of the comparisons were intergroup.