218 Friendship and Conflict
friendship quality. Similarly, Hibbard and Buhrmester (2010) showed that although
both competitive male and competitive female adolescents experience less empathy
and more discord in their same- sex friendships, a competing- to- win orientation was
associated with significantly fewer friends, less closeness in same- sex friendships,
and more loneliness among females only. Especially for adolescent females, hyper-
competitiveness has been empirically linked to internalizing problems, aggression,
and peer relationship difficulties (see Hibbard & Buhrmester, 2010).
Research suggests, however, that not all competition may be destructive to ado-
lescent friendships. For example, the drive to achieve mastery or competing to excel
has been shown to be associated with greater perceived social competence (Chen
et al., 2004), and enjoyment of competition has been associated with more com-
panionship and continuation of friendship among male adolescents in both indi-
vidualistic and collectivist cultures (e.g., Schneider et al., 2005; Schneider, Dixon, &
Udvari, 2007). Similarly, Hibbard and Buhrmester (2010) found that a competing-
to- excel orientation was associated with greater closeness among adolescent male
friends. For the most part, however, this study indicated that competing to excel was
unrelated to social functioning, but positively related to self- esteem and negatively
related to depression among both males and females.
Some research suggests that the relationship between competition and friend-
ship during adolescence is more complicated than just the type of competitiveness
involved. In contrast to trait competitiveness predicting behavior across domains,
some researchers have argued that the concept of competitive motivation must be
domain- specific and that domain- specificity is pivotal to understanding the interper-
sonal implications of competition (Tassi & Schneider, 1997). For example, McGuire
(2014) recently found that the particular competitive domain itself and its importance
to the adolescent’s self- concept likely mediates the relationship between competition,
friendship, and emotional distress; that is, the effect of competition on friendship may
vary depending on how important competitive domains like school, sports, social
attention, and attractiveness are to the adolescent. It is also possible that the quality
of the friendship itself makes a difference. In an examination of the balance between
closeness and individuality in adolescent friendships, Shulman and Laursen (2002)
showed that interdependent friends did not see conflict as threatening as did disen-
gaged friends. Engaged friends showed less anger during conflict, blamed each other
less, and had “cooling off ” periods, whereas disengaged friends tended to blame each
other and showed more anger during conflict. Thus, perhaps when the relationships
are good to begin with and the domain relevance is relatively low, a little “friendly”
competition between teenage friends is not so deleterious after all.
Adulthood
To date, there is a paucity of research regarding competition and friendship in adult
samples. Most of the work on adults has been conducted with emerging adults in a