Thread by @HalMarshall2309

This is an interesting take on competition and hypercompetitiveness. washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021…

In “a study published in 2011 in the journal Psychology found that hypercompetitive individuals — those who have a need to win at all cost —

“were more impatient & irritable than their less-competitive counterparts & had higher self-reported health problems, including heart disease.

“This built on prior research, including a 1994 study that found hypercompetitive people to be highly narcissistic and to have lower self-esteem and higher rates of anxiety and depression than others.

“That research painted hypercompetitive people as in need of constant validation, which they seek through a ‘ceaseless round of social activities’—a performance load that inevitably causes them to fall short of their goals and ‘feel perpetually dissatisfied.’

“ ‘One of the dangers of a competitive personality is that even non-competitiveness situations can become competitive, and that ruins your hedonic experience,’ or enjoyment of the moment, says Stephen Garcia, professor of management at the University of California, Davis.

“ ‘Some people manufacture this angst,’ he adds, for example by allowing themselves to be bothered by the fact that the other person in a hotel elevator is staying on a higher floor than they are.

“More broadly, Crocker says people are social animals who often operate under two major motivations: Ecosystem motivations, which recognize groups as interconnected sets of individuals whose behavior affects the health and wellbeing of others in the group.

“And what she calls ‘egosystem motivation,’ in which people view others as either a means or an obstacle to an end.”