Competitiveness and Individualism-Collectivism in Bali and the U.S (Report‪)‬

Competitiveness is an important personality characteristic that influences behavior across an array of social environments. While researchers have explored competitive behavior in several social contexts, including sports (Gill & Deeter, 1988; Houston, Carter, & Smither, 1997), work (Helmreich, Swain, & Carsud, 1986), and school (Griffin-Pierson, 1990), relatively little research has focused on cross-cultural aspects of competitiveness. This study investigated the relationship between different aspects of competitiveness and collectivism-individualism in Bali and the U.S. Research on competitiveness spans more than a century, beginning with the work of Triplett (1897) on competitive efforts in sports. Later, the neo-Freudian Karen Horney (1937) stressed the unhealthy aspect of extreme competitiveness by linking "hypercompetitiveness" to neurosis. According to Horney (1937) hypercompetitiveness represents an indiscriminant need for individuals to compete at any cost in order to maintain or increase feelings of self-worth. Following a different theoretical framework based on achievement motivation research, Helmreich and Spence (1978) defined competitiveness in more general terms as the desire to win against others. Accordingly, general competitiveness is a potentially adaptive trait across a range of occupational domains, including business, law, and sports (Houston, Carter, & Smither, 1997). However, in contexts involving cooperative activities, such as driving, general competitiveness can be socially dysfunctional (Houston, Harris, & Norman, 2003). More recently, Ryckman, Hammer, Kaczor, and Gold (1996) argue that competitive attitudes that focus on self-discovery and personal development represent a psychologically healthy form of competitiveness. Consequently, three aspects of competitiveness have emerged: general competitiveness, hypercompetitiveness , and healthy competitiveness.