Many enterprises induce competition by offering incentive, a pay raise, and promotion to improve work performance. At school too, students are made to compete with each other by grading and ranking them in an effort to improve learning. However, does competition really help one work or study better?
Professor Stephen Garcia at University of Michigan in U.S., and Professor Avishalom Tor at University of Haifa in Israel, investigated the number of SAT takers and the average scores in order to learn the correlation between competition and outcome. As a result, it turned out that as the number of competitors increases, the scores are likely to decrease. Some other experiments also showed that the increase in competition causes the outcome to decrease.
A certain level of competition helps with motivation and increase in productivity. However, better results can be produced through teamwork rather than competition. Teamwork not only brings a good result, but also helps us learn what is necessary to live together such as the ability to solve problems, patience, and consideration while exchanging opinions and helping each other.
If we regard the people at work, at school, or around us as colleagues to work together, not as competitors, we will feel so much more joy.