Essay on Competition

Essay on Competition!

A student who takes admission in a college and finds that the standard of the students is not up to the mark in comparison to his standard, there will be no desire for competition. Thus the scope for competition occurs only when persons of equal calibre compete with each other. Competition acts as an incentive in the sense that it motivates a person to make efforts to reach the goal.

The desire for competition is influenced by the desire for recognition, influence, status or the desire to over ride a rival what is meant by competition? It means striving to equal or surpass the speed, quality and overall quality of another person’s performance. By competition one tries to do better than another person of the same rank, status or class. In social life competition is a remarkably powerful social incentive.

In western countries and particularly in USA children from the very beginning are made habituated to grow in a competitive atmosphere. A child of 5-7 years in USA is shown the White House and asked to compete and aspire for the post of President, United States of America.

Because of high degree of competitiveness in the American Society, American people have tremendously prospered in all aspects of life because of their eternal desire to compete and to do better than the fellow counterpart. That is why competition improves performance.

When there is a need for competition? When many individuals desire to reach the same limited goal there is competition. Thus scarcity may be the mother of competition. Are competition and rivalry same as ordinarily considered? Kupuswamy has attempted to make a distinction between competition and rivalry.

In rivalry, attempts are made by the person to surpass his rival not by improving one’s performance though good personal efforts, but by trying to throw out the other individuals from the position occupied from his way through unfair means, like making false allegations, name calling, by filing unanimous petitions, back bitting, attempting to kill, poison or murder the person etc. On the other hand, competition refers to an attempt by a person to improve his performance through actual efforts.

Competition is a healthy way of achieving greater status, power, position and respect in the society while rivalry is an unhealthy and wrong way of achieving things. This author remembers a very interesting incident of her life when she was pursuing her post graduate studies in Patna University.

One of her competitors who was staying in the hostel was very much worried about this author’s performance. She wanted to surpass this author. She had neither the capacity nor the efforts to surpass this author.

Just before the examination this author found that all her notes and practical records were stolen away. This is a case of rivalry where a competitor is put to difficulty through some unfair means. In another instance two girl friends who were doing P.G. were competing with each other to stand first.

One of them became very jealous of the other and went to the extent of telling their H.O.D. that “so and so was speaking very badly against you Sir” and etc. The H.O.D. got very annoyed and due to his active efforts this girl did not get a first class. The other girl who played the mischief however got a first class and now is holding a good job.

There is also another distinction between the two on the basis of the area of social relation in which the two individuals or groups are operating. There is jealous and hatred in rivalry while competition does not lead to jealousy or hatred. Rivalry is limited to personal enimity and face to face relationship, while competition is much more impersonal and formal. In competition there is no ill feeling or act of violence.

Rivalry ultimately leads to violence and unclean acts since the aim and purpose here is to degrade and bring down the prestige and status of the other man in the society. The ultimate aim of rivalry is to destroy the rivalry groups. Rivalry thus breeds violence.

In a society where there is rivalry, there is violence. But in a social structure where non-violence is the ideal of human relationship, there is no place for rivalry and hatred. Here there is enormous scope for healthy competition.

There can be two types of competition. Competition with self and competition with others. In competition with oneself the sole purpose is always to improve oneself, i.e. improve one’s performance each day. Here one tries to do better every day.

He tries to learn from his failures and improve his everyday performance. This is a very healthy attitude and helps one in introspecting himself and improving his performance every day.

This helps in the building of a healthy, peaceful and progressive society. If every individual of the society through self competition can attempt to improve his own standard of achievement, the entire society will be free from poverty, need, hunger, violence and all evils of the society. Developing countries like India should attempt to encourage self competition.

Spirit and attitude of self competition can be embedded in one’s personality by proper parental training from the childhood. The purpose of self competition is to bring improvement always in one self.

Just like the Mirror Drawing experiment where in every successive trial there is decrease in error and increase in output because of practice, in self competition the person improves his performance every minute by enforcing his desire to excel his previous performance in every sphere of life.

But one has to accept the hard fact that in some years back in societies where prestige, power and wealth are associated with birth and caste, there is hardly any competition.

However, it is difficult rather rare to find out such a society currently particularly in a democratic society. In the present society everyone has to compete with every other person in every sphere.

On the other hand in India there is reservation of seats in educational institutions and in jobs for SC, ST and socially educationally backward persons and socially disadvantaged persons like women. They do not have to compete with the unreserved class people, but with themselves.

Opportunities and rights given by birth are slowly and gradually disintegrating particularly in democratic countries. Now we find in India people who were not born rich or born to higher class families have achieved name and fame through their own personal efforts and struggle to improve.

Even the constitution of India has given enormous scope for competition by removing all the discrepancies associated with sex, caste, creed etc. Rivalry is more found in a caste, class and birth based society. The aim of people growing in such societies is to pull down those who are their enemies or who they consider as standing on their way.

By self competition one can improve his past performance and this is very essential until 100 per cent proficiency is achieved. The parents, grandparents, relations and teachers who come in contact with the child should encourage each child to compete with his own past performance.

The genesis of competition as a social motive is found even in very small kids. In an observation a small child of seven months even attempted to compete with his grandfather. The grandfather started beating his palms on the bed where the child was sitting. The child immediately started beating his two legs on the bed in reply to his grandfather.

As the grandfather started increasing the presence of the palms on the bed, the child also increased the pressure of his legs in the bed. In this way he tried and tried until he became tired and could no more beat his legs on the bed. In another incident an eight month old baby’s father started saying in a slow voice ‘Baba’ ‘baba’ to the baby. The baby responsed by saying Baba-baba.

Then his father increased his voice a little and said a little loudly than the earlier, Baba-baba. Now the baby also raised his voice. In the third trial the father raised his voice a little more and also the baby tried to increase his voice. In this way they tried to compete with each other. This may also be a case of imitation.

Competitive motive is mostly developed by parents at home. It is found that in middle class children the sense of competition is more than in the lower class children. The reason of this may be attributed to their parental training. Many parents are seen encouraging their children to beat other children in studies, sports and debate competition.

Finding of several experimental studies show that competition grows with age. In a significant study by Greenbezg (1932) children in the nursery school were given a block-building play.

The results as indicated in the following table showed the increase with age:

The above result table indicates that competition in the children’s play shows differences between 3-4 years of age and increase with age, older children give more evidence of competitive behaviour. According to Kupuswamy and other psychologists competition grows with the growth of social perception.

Unless there is social perception, competition may be difficult to grow. By the time most children admitted in school, they learn how to compete with others. Enough day-to -day evidences prove that competition increases in group situation. Allport (1924) has opined that there is a social facilitation when an individual works in a group.

In a study the present author found that when a group of ladies sit together and start knitting, the knitting is more than when it is done alone keeping the number of hours constant. In this study in the controlled situation five ladies having more or less equal speed in knitting wollen garments were selected for the study.

Each day one girl was given to knit a simple pattern for 2 hours. In this way for five days five girls were given separate rooms to knit for 2 hours. The pattern was same for each member. On the experimental condition they were asked to sit together and knit the same pattern for two hours.

It was found that knitting was more in a group situation for every member. There was intristic competition among themselves since the experimenter never told that anybody who knits more lines will be given a reward.

Dashiel (1930) of course found that there is social facilitation even when the individual works alone, but knows that there are other persons in other rooms doing the same work. However, social facilitation is always greater when one works in a group since the sights and sounds of physical control of other workers reinforce the work of others in a group.

But the reinforcement is less when there are no sight and sounds but each member is aware that some other members are doing similar tasks in other nearby rooms. Even it is well known that the presence of spectators, enhances competition in games and spoils. Hurlock (1927) has also conducted some experimental work in competition as a social motive on school children.

He found that because of the enforcement of competitive spirit experimentally, the experimental group excelled the control groups which was equal with the control group in age and initial ability. It was also noticed that because of competition girls also did a little better than boys. Further, the younger children were found to profit more than the younger children.

Another interesting fact noticed was that initially the inferior children seemed to profit more from competition. Probably because the minds of the olders are more cemented than the younger ones, they could not perform better than the younger one’s due to competition. Green conducted a study on 80 men and 80 women using spoon packing and card sorting work to find out the effect of competition on performance.

Results showed that all groups improved as a result of practice. However, there was significant difference between the control group and the competitive group while there was no significant difference between the other groups.

The findings of the above experiment threw light on several facts:

(1) Performance improves due to practice.

(2) The mere sight and sound of others working creates social facilitation and hence improves performance.

(3) Competition over and above social facilitation also brings improvement in performance.

It can be concluded that cultural upbringings and social norms in the groups may be a very important factor in determining whether a group is competitive or non-competitive. It is observed that in competitive societies individuals try to improve their position through their own efforts.

But in highly competitive societies like USA there is a feeling of personal insecurity. Competition undoubtedly provides a powerful source of motivation, but the greater is the level of aspiration without proper ability, the higher is the feeling of insecurity due to inability to reach the higher level of aspiration.