216 Friendship and Conflict
achieve healthy separation from parents. On the other hand, competition has also
been thought of as detrimental to maintaining close, quality relationships because
it produces less liking and interferes with the satisfaction of personal needs as com-
pared with cooperation (Deutsch, 1949; Singleton & Vacca, 2007). Moreover, com-
petition is thought to impact friendships negatively because it causes tension and ill
feelings due to the fact that one friend will win while the other will lose, which can,
in turn, negatively affect the “loser’s” self- evaluation (e.g., Tesser, 1988; Tesser &
Moore, 1990). Berndt (1996) maintained that not all competition is undesirable,
but when competition gets too intense it can lead to negative feelings and a gen-
erally negative interaction style between friends. Kohn (1992), however, argued
that there is virtually no evidence that competition is either inevitable or desirable.
Instead, friendships primarily exist for personal satisfaction and enjoyment rather
than fulfillment of a task or goal (Wiseman, 1986).
Most of the research regarding the impact of competition on friendships and
other close relationships has been conducted with either children or adolescents.
The studies conducted with adult samples tend to predominantly comprise emerg-
ing adults (i.e., college- age), although a few studies have included middle- age adults.
Here, we take an abbreviated life span approach and highlight representative find-
ings at each developmental level.
Childhood
Competition among young children has been studied both in terms of competitive
situations and competitiveness as a personality trait. For example, early research
demonstrated that under competitive (rather than cooperative) conditions in a
token- giving game, 4- to 5- year- old children showed less altruism toward their peers
(Masters, 1971), and children rated as competitive by teachers had lower empa-
thy scores than children rated as less competitive (Barnett, Matthews, & Howard,
1979). In analyzing the verbal social interactions between friends and nonfriends
among first and third graders, Newcomb, Brady, and Hartup (1979) discovered
that, regardless of incentive condition in a block- building task (promotive or
individualistic), friends were more affective, made more references to equity, and
used more mutual (rather than individualistic) commands; overall, the interaction
between friends was much more harmonious than the interaction between non-
friends. When comparing resource allocation of pennies in a social decision- making
task among 8- to 12- year- olds, Knight and Chao (1991) found more frequent coop-
eration and less frequent competition among siblings and friends versus acquain-
tances. Moreover, this study suggested that boys used individualistic resource
allocation for normative social comparison with friends, whereas girls used more
equality resource allocation and less superiority resource allocation than boys. Tassi
and Schneider (1997) demonstrated that elementary school- age children could
distinguish between task- oriented and other- referenced types of competition, and