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Competition is everywhere in our society. The study researches whether competition effects on the result of work and whether the age effects on competition. The study is progressed by 12 student participants in Prague, Czech Republic. It was hypothesized that competition would affect the result of work and the young age would get more influenced by competition. The results support that through competitive behavior, competition usually makes the development of the results of the test but the age is not related to competitive behavior.
Competitive behavior and Psychology
Nowadays, humans live in a competitive society, which means there are many competitions in our society. According to the dictionary (Cambridge dictionary), competition is a situation in which someone is trying to win something or be more successful than someone else. There are many perspectives on competitive behavior. To explain competitive behavior, evolutionary psychology is used for it. Evolutionary psychology connects evolutionary principles with modern psychology and focuses primarily on psychological adaptations: changes in the way we think in order to improve our survival. (David M. Buss, 2019). From primitive ages, every organism participated in competitions to survival and through natural selection, organisms should have competitive behavior to adapt to the new environment and to survive. (Charles Darwin, 2018). It has a prerequisite that humans have these characteristics and features because the species that have these characteristics have advantages to adapt to the new environment. With this prerequisite, it concludes as humans have competitive behavior due to this species have competitive behavior is advantageous to survive. For example, to be fertilization, 300 million sperms compete to be one with egg, and then only one sperm which wins in the race can be fertilization with egg. Human life starts with competition and end with the competition, and there are many competitions between our lives. Through this process, humans are born, and humans cannot help supporting competition by natural. Therefore, the experiment is about whether competition effects on the result of work and whether the age effects on competition. It was hypothesized that competition would affect the result of work and the young age would get more influenced by competition.
Participant
The study is conducted at Christian International School of Prague, which is CISP, Czech Republic. Six male and female participants between the age of 13 to 19 were selected by random sampling for the experiment, and all participants are from CISP students. Participants consist of 2 students from each grade from the 7th-grade to 12th-grade, so it became 12 participants. Participants in this experiment gladly accepted asks that taking two tests and the time for two tests was not limited.
Methods and Procedure
This experiment is divided into two small tests. Two tests test is prepared with five math questions, twelve participants, and a person who count time. participants are separated two people from the same grade in one group.
For the first test, a person who conducts the experiment asks one group of participants to solve five math questions and count the time when they finish. For the second test, most parts are as same as the first test, but the person lets participants know this time is competition between two people in one group.
Discussion
The purpose of this experiment was to know whether competitive behavior affects the result and any influence of age. Overall these results show that when the participants know they are in competition, most time that participants solve is decreased. In the first test, some participants discussed their questions and also they solved questions together, but in the second test, none of the participants speak and talk while they solve questions. Also, some participants who get some questions wrong in the first test get more correct answers in the second test. In addition, there is no big difference in the gap between the two results between the young age and the old age. However, there are some differences in their behavior between the young age and the old age. Young age students have more competitive behavior when it was a competition while old age students usually do not care about the competition and they already knew that it is not a big project or grade. Through this experiment, the results support that competition affects work and work is developed with the competition, but not the influence on the age.
With memories from childhood, humans get many positive reinforcers such as compliments, prizes, gifts and so on when humans win in a competition. Through these experiences, make humans want to win in a competition or have competitive behavior and want to get reinforcers. In this situation, reinforcers are conditioned stimulus and competitive behavior is conditioned response. Therefore humans and animals are practiced in competition and try to do their best when it is competition.
References
- BUSS, D. A. V. I. D. (2019). Evolutionary Psychology the new science of the mind. Place of publication not identified: ROUTLEDGE.
- Christiansen, F. B., & Loeschcke, V. (1990, January 1). Evolution and Competition. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-74474-7_13.
- Competition. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://psychology.jrank.org/pages/135/Competition.html.
- COMPETITION: meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/competition.
- DiMenichi, B. C., & Tricomi, E. (2015, September 1). The power of competition: Effects of social motivation on attention, sustained physical effort, and learning. Retrieved from
- Evolutionary Theory and Psychology. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2009/05/sci-brief.
- Stefoff, R., White, T., & Darwin, C. (2018). Charles Darwins On the origin of species. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.
- The Psychology Behind Competition: Why Incentives Work. (2018, August 15). Retrieved from https://www.gavelintl.com/psychology-behind-competition-incentives-work/.
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