Poster #224 - Competing to Win Versus Improve: How Gender and Task Incentives Influence Competition in Adolescent Friendships

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

Adolescents use social comparison as a tool for developing their identity and self-concept; these comparisons are most likely to occur within close, interpersonal relationships such as friendships. Social comparison may lead to competition within friendship, but research presents conflicting views on the role of competition in adolescent friendships, regarding both its prevalence and impact. Some argue that competition is more likely among friends than nonfriends, whereas others argue that competition is antithetical to friendship ideals and can lead to dissatisfaction and friendship termination. However, research on competition between friends has been hampered by significant methodological limitations. To begin, few studies distinguish divisive, zero-sum competition from integrative forms in which competitors cooperate so both excel or improve. Further, while social psychological research clearly shows that even subtle differences in task parameters can alter the nature and amount of competition and cooperation, almost no existing research has carefully varied task incentives to observe their effects on the competitive behavior of friends. Finally, most existing research on friendship competition depends on self-reports of behavior with a single friend. Children rarely interact with friends individually, thus this portrait of friendship competition may represent only a small slice of their experience competing with friends.
The present study is an observational study of 101 same-sex friendship triads (53 female) of adolescents between the ages of 10 and 16 years interacting in a lengthy sequence of tasks carefully crafted from past research and theory to vary the amount and nature of competition. After an initial neutral task, the triads participated in a series of four activities that escalated in intensity and varied the salience and meaning of winning. Independent teams of coders coded four group behaviors with high reliability: 1. Competing to Win (i.e., competitive behavior driven by social comparison and demonstration of superiority,), 2. Competing to Excel (i.e., competitive behavior focusing on effort and self-improvement), 3. Positive Affect, and 4. Negative Affect.
Repeated measures ANOVA revealed several significant main effects and interactions. The context by type interaction is shown in Figure 1. As predicted, competition among friends was highly sensitive to context and most competition between friends was to excel together rather than superiority-oriented. On the other hand, superiority competition was more sensitive to the parameters of the task and friends did not avoid it when tasks encouraged it. Boy triads were not more competitive overall, but they did engage in more superiority-oriented competition than did girls (see Figure 2). Competitive-oriented tasks produced more positive and more negative affect among friends than did baseline and cooperative tasks, but positive affect was always higher than negative. Boys and girls did not differ in positive affect in any context, but boys were more negative than girls in the most competitive contexts.
Results suggest that understanding competition between friends can be improved by carefully considering task parameters, studying friends in groups, and distinguishing different forms of competitive behavior. Friendship competition is complex, and researchers should avoid overgeneralizations, particularly regarding sex differences.

Authors

• Katelyn Massey, University of Alabama
  Presenting Author

• Jeff Parker, The University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author