Is competition good or bad for students

Consider the common (albeit, often unspoken) competition between friends to have the nicest car, newest electronics, and most expensive clothes.

I’m sure that you’re familiar with this phenomenon enough to know that it’s often coupled with feelings of jealousy, resentment, and discontent.

Humans are naturally competitive and have an intrinsic drive to have a relative advantage over one another.

Negative effects of competition

There is a lot of research to support this claim, such as this 1974 study that found that a country’s richer citizens were generally happier than those who were poor.

However, as the country  gained wealth, their citizens’ sense of happiness didn’t correlate–if everyone became richer, no one got happier.

This is because in this case, people’s happiness stemmed from their relative amount of wealth when comparing oneself to others.

Furthermore, a study of 12,000 citizens in England revealed that an increase in income only heightened life satisfaction when one’s income rose comparatively to similar aged peers with an equivalent  education.

These social comparisons are exampl

why is competition bad for society

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