The good and bad of being competitive

As a lifelong athlete, I considered myself to be a rather competitive person. I thrived when I had a competitive other with which to spar. A friend of mine from the eighth grade would compete with me for grades, and it made me a better student. I even considered getting my Ph.D. a competition because I wanted to be the first to complete my dissertation in my matriculating class.

However, competition can become excessive if we aren’t aware of how it can control us. “Competitiveness is, however, both a virtue and a vice. One person’s win can be another person’s loss, and the drive to be better than others, when taken too far, can appear ruthless and selfish” (Hibbard & Buhrmester, 2010, p. 412). When a person’s desire is to outperform others, it stems from a need to demonstrate power and is related to aggression. Consider how polarizing competitiveness can make our society.

This type of competitiveness, competing to win (CW), has been found to disrupt community and contribute to relationship problems (Hibbard & Buhrmester, 2010). Hypercompetitive individuals had less concern for others (Ryckman, Libby, van den Borne, Gold, & Lindner, 1997), and scored higher on Machiavellianism (Houston, Queen, Cruz, Vlahov, & Gosnell, 2015) and overt narcissism measures (Luchner, Houston, Walker, & Houston, 2011). In other words, competitiveness can be harmful in your…