Chapter 6: The Competition-Performance Relation from the Perspective of the Opposing Processes Model

Interpersonal competition is highly prevalent in many settings, such as schools, workplaces, sports, arts, and music. One can easily envision how competition, and associated processes and outcomes, would have a considerable impact on people’s motivation, emotion, and cognitive processes. When a person wins a competition, that person experiences feelings of triumph that are a basis for building his or her self-esteem and confidence. When a person loses, on the other hand, that person experiences feelings of dejection that can lead to ego threat and a crisis of confidence. Clearly, competition has a vitally important influence on the self.

Given the prevalence of competition in society, it is not surprising that scientific psychologists became interested in the effects of competition long ago. In a famous social-psychological experiment conducted more than 100 years ago (this study is sometimes referred to as the first social-psychological experiment; see Allport, 1954), Triplett (1898; see also Stroebe, 2012) demonstrated that children do better on a simple fishing reel task when they perform alongside another child. Since that time, many studies on competition have been conducted in broad areas of psychology, including educational psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, socialpersonality psychology, and sport and exercise psychology.