A competition-oriented atmosphere minimally increases anxiety, but at the same time, a competitive-avoidance attitude results in worse health indicators, regardless of the school the student attends. Interview with psychologist Márta Fülöp Dr.
For several decades, Dr. Márta Fülöp has been researching the culture of competition at home, in America and in Asian countries. In the course of his investigations, he also shed light on surprising things, for example, that in dictatorial China, mothers pass on to their children sound and firm principles about how to handle victory and defeat, or that at home, children do not tell their teachers about cheating at school until they are young.
When did you start researching the competition?
My university thesis was already about this, and I have been investigating this continuously since then, for 40 years now. At first, I was excited that the assessment of competition and cooperation in social psychology was highly simplistic. I named this the "Beauty and the Beast" paradigm: Beauty was cooperation, Beast was competition. This partly corresponded to the concept of ideological competition prevailing in socialist Hungary in the 1970s, which strongly condemned competition and tried to eliminate it from both political and economic life. From the beginning, I thought more nuancedly about the relationship between competition and cooperation, I saw them not as mutually exclusive, but often intertwined. And I saw not only the negative, destructive side of competition, but also competition with constructive and positive consequences.
What are the conditions for constructive competition?
The most important rule-keeping is that the competing parties observe the written, institutional, and unwritten, informal rules of the competition. This creates a kind of trust between the competing parties:
everyone can safely focus on performing as well as possible during the competition, getting the most out of themselves.
That way, you don't have to constantly monitor your competitor in order to avoid his irregular fight. In this case, the most basic cooperation between the competing parties is compliance with the rules.
What does it depend on whether the rules are followed?
It also has individual, situational and social and cultural components. One of the most important situational factors is how clear the rules are and what the consequences are for not following them.
My research shows that it is easier for competing parties to deviate from the rules when the stakes of the competition are high and the resources are scarce, meaning that if someone does not win them, there are no other similar opportunities for which they can continue to compete. If, for example, a large amount of money is at stake or jobs are at stake. And it can also lead to a violation of the rules if the competing parties start with unequal opportunities in a situation.
What happens when someone is caught cheating?
If someone has lost by being cheated on, their main emotions will be frustration and anger. If you feel that you have a chance to prove yourself right, then some of your energy will go into exposing the cheater or taking revenge on him.
However, if he does not have the chance to do so, he will feel powerless, lose confidence in the competition, and if he is forced to enter such situations again, he will become suspicious.
The impact of school cheating on society
What else promotes compliance?
Good relationship between competing parties. Our investigations also revealed that if the rules are followed, the communication between the competing parties is open, and they feel that they are learning and developing while competing with each other, then a neutral relationship can become positive. Rivals may even fall in love with each other. However, if the parties use aggression and manipulation, the competition becomes hostile.
Who can stop destructive competition?
In an institutional environment, at school or at work, leaders (teachers and managers) have a big role in making clear the rules of competition, what is allowed and what is not in competition, and what the consequences are if someone breaks these rules. It is important for the manager to explain why it is important for everyone not to study or work in an environment of destructive competition. In other words, constructive competition must be socialized. A research also revealed that if the competition is fair and regular, the winner and the loser do not turn away from each other. The winner is able to recognize the efforts of the loser, and the loser is able to recognize the winner.
School tests were also carried out, what did they reveal?
In a survey conducted by observing Hungarian, Slovenian and English students, we found that the Hungarian teachers gave the children a lot of competitive tasks and usually left it to them to correct them. But the children often cheated on the test, and this was especially typical of Hungarian schoolchildren. It was also interesting that if the teacher did not notice the fraud, but a classmate did and reported it to the teacher, the teacher warned him that it was none of his business, did not give credit to the whistleblower, and did not deal with the fraud. According to our observations, this happened in nine out of ten cases: it was not the fraudster, but the fraudster who was morally condemned, and the fraudster could happily experience the fact that he was "spotless". We also observed 10th-grade high school students shooting while writing papers, which the teacher did not see, but the other students did. Here, no one spoke anymore: they learned that both the teacher and the community condemn those who warn about the observance of the competition rules, not those who break the rules.
What can be the explanation for this?
This is partly due to the fact that we do not see the rules as meaningful tools based on consensus that promote the constructiveness of coexistence, but rather as meaningless control imposed on us by the authorities (unfortunately, not infrequently, of course, correctly), and therefore we consider those who warn against their non-compliance to be traitors. This leads to a distorted morality. The leader or teacher must say that the observance of sensible rules is a helper for common development and group cohesion, and if someone erodes it, then the group must understand this. In our joint article published with my former doctoral student Gábor Orosz and my French colleague Christine Roland Levy, we showed that school fraud is positively correlated with social corruption.
The Asian thread
He also did research in Japan, if I understand correctly.
Japan is characterized by strong competition and high-level cooperation, and I was very interested in this. Moreover, this was in 1996-1997, when at home, shortly after the change of regime, competition appeared in Hungarian society, in economic and political life, but due to the lack of adequate regulatory mechanisms, this competition was "cut-throat" and hostile. volt. It lacked the ability to cooperate with competing partners, compared to this, Japan proved to be an excellent research field.
In the island country, the rival is not only an enemy, but also a partner. The goal of competing parties is to develop, grow, and do so by competing with each other.
Rivals mutually provide each other with inspiration, so the goal is not to eliminate the rival, but to keep him in the competition, because this guarantees development. Of course, there is also hostile competition, just as competition for development can be identified among the Hungarian participants. But the Hungarian participants focus on themselves, and if they also focus on the rival, then in a negative sense, on its elimination.
He said that at the beginning of his research on competition, the concept was very negative even among psychologists...
Yes, for example, it was also a common belief that students in competitive schools are psychologically burdened. But in one of our studies, we compared eleventh-grade students studying in the best high schools in the country with students of the same age in Waldorf schools, and it turned out that
the competition-oriented atmosphere minimally raises anxiety, while at the same time, the competitive-avoidance attitude results in worse health indicators, regardless of the school the student attends.
The most important factor in students' health was the presence of protective factors, regardless of the competitive or non-competitive atmosphere. Those with strong resilience, positivity, and self-efficacy are healthier in both competitive and non-competitive environments, and those who avoid competition are in a worse psychological state even in non-competitive environments. In other words, the "racing stable" effect is actually minimal.
Whose competitive attitude depends on what?
The family plays the most important role in this. We are currently conducting a Hungarian-Chinese comparative study, in which we ask parents of children between the ages of 3 and 9, especially mothers, about what kind of attitude towards competition they would like to develop in their children. What do they teach the little ones to deal with winning and losing, and what pedagogical methods are used to achieve this.
And what did they find in the Chinese-Hungarian comparison?
The competition in China is very strong, parents take this for granted and try to prepare their children as best as possible to stand their ground in this strong competition. Chinese mothers have a very precise idea of how to handle both winning and losing.
Hungarian mothers are much more ambivalent about competition: they often want their children not to be competitive, and they try to protect their children from a competitive environment. They do not have a definite idea about the socialization of competition.
It is interesting that although there is high corruption in Chinese society, which means non-meritocratic competition, young people still believe that their prosperity depends on them, on their own effort, hard work and standing in the competition. They believe in work and in the fact that it is worth fighting and getting the most out of yourself. At home, we tend to get discouraged if society is corrupt, if the competition is unfair: it doesn't matter if we're good or not, it's not worth fighting for. But even in an unfair system, one has a better chance of achieving one's goal if one does not give up.
Featured image: Kata Németh/Index
