Competition in Friendship 223results in male friends being relatively comfortable with competing to win but may
leave female friends rather uneasy about it.
On the other hand, because the motivation is individual accomplishment instead
of a “zero- sum” enterprise, competing to excel is likely less related to friendship
quality. Rather, this type of competition is meant to encourage individual achieve-
ment without undermining communal connectedness. Competing to excel is also
less gender- typed, does not involve inflicting loss on others, and is relatively norma-
tive for both genders in contemporary Western culture, so it should not inherently
undermine close friendships. Indeed, most of the life span research presented earlier
in this chapter seems to support this contention. Moreover, this type of competition
might even be of some benefit to friendships in the form of facilitating higher social
competence among males and females (e.g., Chen et al., 2004; Wentzel, 2005) or
as a way to promote social bonding and companionship among males in both indi-
vidualistic and collectivist cultures (Schneider et al., 2005).
Cultural Values
The influence of culture on the socialization and prevalence of competitive moti-
vations and behaviors among children, adolescents, and adults is complex and
cannot be overstated. Unfortunately, this area is lacking in terms of both modern
conceptualizations and recent research. Early research and theory took a helpful but
simplistic approach that assumed that individualistic cultures foster individualistic,
competitive values, whereas collectivist cultures foster group- oriented, cooperative
values. For example, Hofstede (1980) asserted that in collectivist cultures— where
the emphasis is on group success and individual ambitions are reserved for the
attainment of group goals— competitiveness may be seen as undesirable for both
males and females. Yet, as Schneider et al. (2006) argued, this simple reduction of
individualism versus collectivism is not sufficient to explain why children from dif-
ferent cultures show variation in competitive motivations, goals, and behaviors. The
trend is to move away from categorical views and toward more fluid representations
of value systems within a culture represented as a continuum with individualism
and collectivism as the end points. Moreover, these value systems operate through
socialization processes at various contextual sublevels (e.g., family, peers, school;
Schneider et al., 2006).
Although a thorough review of the literature regarding cultural differences in
competitiveness is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Schneider et al., 2006, for
a review regarding cultural differences in competitiveness among children and ado-
lescents), there are a few themes that can be taken from past cross- cultural research
and theory that may help explain the role of competition in friendship. For example,
in his discussion of the concept of individualism as two indigenous psychologies,
Sampson (1977, 1988) articulated the differences between self- contained individu-
alism, where the emphasis is on firmly drawn self- other boundaries and personal