The Psychology of Competition: A Social Comparison Perspective

OSQs

Outlines

Competitiveness and Social Comparison

– The passage is all about reducing differences in the society and developing factors to do social comparison

– Situational and individual factors have been highlighted to increase competitiveness

The framework highlighting situational and individual factors

-The social comparison model has identified different situational and individual factors to evaluate competitive behavior.

– The procedure of social comparison has been highly motivated by incentive structures that are a basic situational variable.

Individual factors dealing with competitiveness

– Relational and personal factors play a vital role to bring competitiveness among various players

-Their similarities and differences have been outlined by emphasizing upon their personal history and relationship closeness

Situational factors tackling competitiveness

-Competition increases when direct incentives are introduced and actors involve in comparison

-Proximity gets intensified when competitiveness rise and comparison are taken into much consideration

Fault lines while categorizing socially

-Competitiveness and comparison complexities are raised through fault lines like males and females

-It is a relational factor’s important part concerning point-of-views of different actors

Prospective outlook

-Few built situational factors boosts comparison exceptions and concerns

-Cooperation is less when uncertainties in workplace are high

Communication and interactions between situational and individual factors

– Adopting the self-evaluation maintenance framework emphasizes the hydraulic characteristics of closeness and relevance.

– Competition can be raised by evaluating unique features like total competitors’ number.

Drawbacks

-An individualistic and western culture raises some social concerns as the focus lacks Eastern areas

-Doubts regarding culture-oriented framework occurs from individualized, Western cultures

Lens of social comparison

– The framework identifies both early and recent research in different categories of situational and individual factors.

– New lessons has been discussed across and beyond the concepts of psychology.

Psychology of personality

– Gender is considered an important with regards to competitiveness.

– This sections shows that females are generally less competitive as compared to male.

Psychology of organization

– The framework is designed to evaluate employee motivation.

– Several factors influences the motivation of employees such as increasing number of employee, ranking the employees and many more.

Psychology of consumer

– There is a strong link between social comparison and self-threat within consumer psychology.

– Research suggest that wealthier individuals are much more vulnerable to conspicuous consumption.

Psychology of education

-Model of expectancy value is much important for the achievement of students within educational psychology.

– The concept of competition can be harmful within the educational institute.

Psychology of evolution

– Nonhuman primates seem susceptible to dynamic of being proximity to standard that express sensitivity to hierarchies and ranking.

– The study says situational factors require more sophisticated level of mind theory.

Economics beyond psychology

– Experimental economic focuses on main interpersonal preferences such as altruism, reciprocity and many more.

– The framework predicts that highly ranked candidates tend to spar with other.

Summary

The overall article mainly deals with social comparison and identifies it as the propensity for self-assessment. In society, individuals compare each other and are considered a vital competitive attitude’s source. Based on the concept of social comparison theory, a common drive sets in motion person for enhancing their performance level. It is also useful further in gradually minimizing differences between other people’s and own performance levels. An indirectional push is created by the actions undertaken for reducing complexities for doing better. Situational and individual factors have been categorized by introducing the latest framework for maximizing social comparison. Three variables were present in the model performance dimension’s relevance to the individual, similarity of the individual to the set target and the intensity of the relationship between the target and the actor. Despite knowing the effectiveness of several individual factors dominating research of social comparison traditionally, situational factors are also responsibly contributing highly to techniques of social comparison. Perceptions of actors in relation to the nearby social atmosphere are taken into consideration by situational factors. Hence, an adverse global effect can be imposed as compared to the role performed by situated actors. Individual factors in relation to competitiveness outline different personal factors and categorize them as personal history, relationship closeness and point-of-views of actors’ relevance. While evaluating individual differences, it can be observed that a range of personality variables play a vital role in motivating the tendency of a person toward reflecting comparison competitiveness and concerns. Mainly, it carries out the orientation of social comparison effectively in order to widen and improve performance objectives. Individuals do competitions on certain dimensions which show effectiveness or relevancy to the individual self. For instance, it can be investigated that there are similarities in playing recreational tennis to maximum players of recreational tennis. In addition, return on investment shows similarity to maximum investment bankers as well as greater academic performance for all students.

Provided that the link between social comparison and self-threats, the framework can also provide predictions about conspicuous consumption. For instance, whereas the individuals who have low power seek good that is of high status within the abstract, they might also face decreased concerns of comparison among various competing customers with a concomitant decrease within conspicuous consumptions. Similarly, the proximity to the standard basically suggests that the highly ranked person with regards to wealth might be much more vulnerable to the comparison that concerns within that domain and tending more in order to compete within the conspicuous race of consumption with the high-ranked peers similarly. One of the prevailing approaches to the achievements of students is based on the models of expectancy-value which view the concept of motivation as the function of expectancies of an individual and perceived value of the goal. However, the framework of the study suggests the situational factors which might inspire achievement motivations and even maintain the expected values. The framework speaks potentially to the role of the evolutionary procedures in social comparison as well as competition. For example, situational factors may have emerged early. The nonhumans primates seem susceptible to the dynamic of being within proximity to provided standards, expressing the sensitivity to the hierarchies and rankings.

The framework contributes to the concept of social psychology by synthesizing early postulates. It mainly reorganizes both the early and recent researches in distinct categories of situational and individual factors. This model provides various new lessons and creates some important questions across the psychology subfields and for the concept of beyond psychology which intersects with comparison study from economics, political science, and through strategy and business to the public policy and law. Various concepts are there beyond the concept of psychology. Those are political science, economics, strategy and business, public policy, and law. Experimental economics basically pays huge attention to the study of the main preferences of interpersonal factors such as reciprocity, inequity aversion, altruism, or fairness which has been deemed irrational traditionally and outside the standard models of economics. Competitive strategy is much concerned with manners the companies seek and compete in order to gain benefit within the market vis-à-vis the competitors. The framework which we provide gives the research of social comparison a chance to inform the strategy field by offering insight into rivalry operation and the supplementary strategy areas which mainly focuses on the role of the positional concerns within the competitive dynamics. The election is also a significant kind of competition and also is the main study areas. Political scientists who are interested in the one in competitive dynamics of the primary election. The model also provides a lesson for various areas of legal that require accounting of the concerns about the relative outcome or position of an individual as well as the social preferences. In sum, the models of social comparison of competition mainly distinguish a person from the situational factors of the social comparison which influences the competitive behavior. For instance, although the feedback that is based on the individual has the ability to curb the social loafing on the collective tasks. The model shows that the motivational deficits can still happen on those tasks that are based on the individual as the count of the worker increases. Hence, the sales agent who is based on commission and the other workers are doing that task only individually would tend to exhibit a better performance when they ate based relatively on the branch offices that are small in size. Conspicuous consumption can easily be a race specifically as an individual often consumes goods of high status in order to compensate for personal deficiencies.

Questions

• What kind of communications and interactions are carried out while evaluating situational and individual factors?
• How cultural concerns can be eliminated using the framework in the practical field?
• How this review will support to develop a unique perspective of psychology with regards to the various competition?
• What are those factors that influence the customers towards the good that are of high status?

References

Garcia, S., Tor, A. and Schiff, T., 2013. The Psychology of Competition. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), pp.634-650.

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