Competition

Competition constitutes a primary facet of life, as individuals within any species strive to satisfy their needs for survival, reproduction, and successful rearing of offspring. For humans, social competition between genetically unrelated individuals of similar age is particularly salient in cultures with formal schooling and public institutions where individuals cooperate apart from families. Drawing on the child development and animal behavior literatures, this entry discusses the influences of biology, sex, culture, social structure, and age on competition between unrelated peers.

Biological substrates of competitive behavior in humans that have been identified include testosterone, cortisol, and alpha-amlyase. For example, in human males, testosterone increases in response to a competitive challenge. Winners' testosterone levels increase, whereas losers' levels decrease. Higher testosterone levels then promote positive expectations of future success.

Biological sex as well as gender identity, whether one feels male or female, relate systematically to competitive behavior. Most peer competition occurs between individuals of the same sex who compete for the same goals. Cross-culturally, beginning in the first years of life, females utilize more polite speech and nonverbal communication, such as smiling and behaving modestly, which serve to diminish retaliatory responses from potential competitors. In contrast, males more frequently exhibit behavior that invites retaliation, such as physically provocative behavior and verbal attempts to [Page 171]dominate others through boasts, commands, threats, name-calling, and derisive jokes.

By middle childhood, males display more interference competition in which one individual must overtly prevent another individual from obtaining a desired outcome. In contrast, females find interference competition aversive and prefer to compete through more indirect or subtle means. Improving personal performance without reference to others; denigrating an absent competitor's reputation; or employing discreet nonverbal signals of competition, such as negative facial expressions, constitute female forms of competing. By middle childhood and increasingly in adolescence and adulthood, in their interests and leisure activities, males are more likely than females to engage in overt interference competition, frequently in the form of playing or observing competitive sports, often between unfamiliar players. In contrast, females derive more pleasure and relaxation from engaging in conversations with friends and relatives about comparisons of familiar individuals' levels of performance.

Results fit squarely within an evolutionary framework in which female mammals, who bear greater responsibility than males for their offsprings' survival, must avoid physical harm and maintain loyal social contacts in order to enhance their reproductive success. Those females who engage in competitive behavior risk retaliation which could endanger nearby offspring as well as their own ability to produce future offspring. By contrast, males, who vary more than females in reproductive success, benefit more from direct competition for mating opportunities. A male who continually attempts to outperform his male peers will hold a reproductive advantage and sire more offspring.

Local cultural norms also exert a powerful influence on absolute levels of competitiveness. Although few differences exist in early childhood, by middle childhood, children from differing countries and from varying cultural backgrounds within the same country differ in degree and form of competitive behavior. These same differences apply to cooperative behavior, and willingness to compete and cooperate frequently correlate positively, not negatively. Although scarcity of resources increases competition, when resources are plentiful but easily monopolized, this also enhances competitiveness.

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