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Cooperation and Competition

Group members are generally expected to cooperate with one another. In fact, groups exist precisely because their members cooperate to achieve shared goals. If this cooperation mutates into competition, groups often fall apart or suffer a schism. In contrast, groups as a whole are often expected to compete with one another. This competition can take the form of friendly rivalry (e.g., two baseball teams trying to win a game), but all too often it is hostile and destructive (e.g., two nations trying to obtain scarce resources). Clearly, then, cooperation and competition are fundamental aspects of the social psychology of groups.

Defining Cooperation and Competition

Based on early research by the social psychologists Morton Deutsch and Muzafer Sherif, cooperation can be characterized as overt or verbal behavior that is intended to help another person achieve his or her goals at the same time as one achieves one's own goals. It is behavior aimed at “doing well together”—at maximizing outcomes for oneself and others. Cooperation is usually associated with a perception of “nonzero-sum” goal relations (achieving one's own goals helps others achieve their goals, and vice versa) and promotive interdependence (one's own behavior is affected by the behavior of others, and vice versa, in ways that advance both parties' goals).

Competition is overt or verbal behavior that is intended to hinder another person from achieving his or her goals at the same time as one achieves one's own goals. It is behavior aimed at “doing better than others”—at maximizing outcomes for oneself relative to others, that is, securing an advantage for oneself. Competition is usually associated with a perception of “zero-sum” goal relations (achieving one's own goals hinders others from achieving their goals, and vice versa) and competitive interdependence (one's own behavior is affected by the behavior of others, and vice versa, in ways that impede each other's goals).

Individualism is a third class of behaviors in which people act as though, in effect, others did not exist. It is behavior aimed at “doing well for oneself”—at maximizing one's own outcomes with no regard for others' outcomes. It is associated with a lack of perception of any goal relations and any interdependence. Individualism can sometimes look like cooperation and sometimes look like competition, but psychologically it is neither.

Evolution and Genetics

The theme of cooperation and competition is prominent across a wide variety of disciplines, probably because it speaks to fundamental assumptions about human nature and the kinds of human society that are possible. The British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his classic 1651 book Leviathan promulgated a very pessimistic view of human nature in which competition ruled supreme. He proclaimed that the natural state of humankind is a “war of all against all” in which lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

More recently, Darwin's theory of evolution, first published in 1859, set the stage for a scientific explanation for the primacy of human competitiveness. According to Darwin, life is all about gaining competitive advantage in promoting one's own genetic makeup. Indeed, in 1976, Richard Dawkins famously coined the term selfish gene to convey the biogenetic imperative responsible for the essential competitiveness and dog-eat-dog nature of human life.

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