Competition

Clinical Case with Children in a Group Setting.

I work with a group of three MSW students developing community based interventions for an after school program in Delray Neighborhood House. My job is to come up with engaging activities to help children and youth learn life skills based on empowerment and strength perspectives. Over the years, I have also worked with children in other settings while volunteering for my daughters’ schools. Teachers too often employ activities that require competition in order to increase participation and task effort when teaching new skills.  I often fall into these same practices of encouraging competition. It is almost as if competition is the natural way of encouraging performance. Competition seems to permeate in our culture as the only means of increasing productivity. I am concern with what negative effects “friendly” competition might have on individual well-being in regards to perceived self-efficacy and self-esteem, especially on children. In my clinical case, I want to know what other ways are there to encourage learning and increase participation in organized activities.

According to Wittchen, Krimmel, Kohler, and Hertel (2013),  negative and positive effects of competition depend on individual predisposition. It is safe to assume this is also true for children in their developmental stage, unique “neural wiring,” socioeconomic status and family context. It may be that some children are not yet prepared to handle competition. Instead of encouraging participation and effort, competition can discourage future effort.  Some children thrive in competition, but those who do, should they do so at the expense of those who do not, especially in group settings that are intended to help children in their emotional social development?

Wittchen, et al., (2013) describe two sides to competition where there is one bound to win and one to lose. In addition, while competition increases performance, it induces stress as perceived threat to well-being. This threat can be emotional and physical. For example, in competition comparisons of one’s abilities are drawn based on success or failure, at which point, one’s social status and well-being in the group is determined. In a classroom setting this can mean that a child who does well in competition can become the teacher’s favor.  Furthermore it is not clear what type of stress competition induces. It can be “distress” where an individual perceives negative stimuli or “eutress” where and individual perceives positive stimuli knowing he/she can overcome the challenge (Wittchen, et al., 2013).

In my clinical presentation members of my group made great recommendations, one, which was to do intergroup instead of interindividual competition activities. Wittchen and colleagues found that the type of competition does matter in reducing stress.  Intergroup competition increases task performance, collaboration, and reduces heart rate variability in women compared to interindividual competition. This observation might or may not be true for children and youth. This effect did not hold true for men where there was no significant difference in the context of the completion.

Another suggestion made by my clinical case group was to encourage children who do well in a particular task teach others. I found this suggestion very useful recently when I was doing spelling with two first graders, Katelin (7) and Max (7). Katelin began to brag about having more correct spelled words. I noticed Max’s demeanor came down as Katelin bragged. I turned my body more toward Max and began to given him more encouragement. I did not enthusiastically praised Katelin for getting the correct spelling, however I did praise Max. When I noticed Katelin stopped bragging, I engaged her in trying to help Max with his spelling and praised her for being helpful. In two occasion Max got the correct spelling, I encouraged him to also help Katelin by giving her clues. I noticed Max’s and Kaitlin's effort and enthusiasm increased as they both helped each other sound out the correct spelling.

Bibliography:

Wittchen, M., Krimmel, A., Kohler, M., & Hertel, G. (2013). The two sides of competition: Competition‐induced effort and affect during intergroup versus interindividual competition. British Journal Of Psychology, 104(3), 320-338. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02123.x

Shaw, A., DeScioli, P., & Olson, K. R. (2012). Fairness versus favoritism in children. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(6), 736-745. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.06.001