Rivalry is a special kind of human relationship, characterized by a struggle for something valuable: power, prestige, recognition, love, material prosperity, etc. The life of modern man in many aspects is built on competition. Today, competitions are held in all areas - in sports, and in art, and in the family, and with friends. It is now believed that a sense of rivalry is useful for the development of the individual, but this is a rather controversial issue.
Types of competition
There are only two types of rivalry, one of them is structural, the other is motivational. The difference in them is significant:
- Structural rivalry means fighting for what is really vital, without which it is impossible to live (for example, fighting for food in the wild, etc.).
- Motivational rivalry arises when the prestige of the championship comes first (for example, as in sports competitions - jumping higher than everyone is not necessary for life, but it is important for public recognition).
It is not difficult to guess that in the human life in the vast majority of cases we see the second type of rivalry. It is also interesting that the one who won, it is necessary to be the only winner - the first place that divides the two teams, leaving the participants of each of them unsatisfied.
The spirit of competition and the problems associated with it
More recently, rivalry in psychology began to be viewed not as a positive phenomenon, but as a negative one. The minds of people are so rooted in the thought that rivalry is stimulating to new achievements and in general it is good that abandoning this idea for some will be quite difficult.
Due to the fact that there is a rivalry in the conflict, in relations and in all other spheres of life, people are inclined to think only about how to gain victory in it. However, often the possibility of losing or the world finals is not considered at all, which is the main problem. People begin to feel that they must be winners, they must always be right. Due to the fact that in this case thinking is realized according to the scheme "my win denotes your loss", which means that people compare themselves with others even in situations in which this is not necessary at all.
The very strategy of rivalry poses the issue of confronting interests in the struggle for individual ownership of the first place, as a result of which people do not consider such an option as cooperation with others. This makes our society aggressive and wary of each other, which in itself is a problem.
Rivalry - is it necessary?
Rivalry, as well as cooperation - is part of human nature, but not innate, but such, which has to be learned in the course of life. There is an opinion that it was the spirit of rivalry that helped humanity to survive, but it's easy to guess that in fact the first place is still cooperation: if people did not join forces and compete with the rest
In many situations, people are so addicted to rivalry that they completely forget that in many situations, the best results can be achieved by cooperating with someone. Competitive attitude to all around leads to many psychological problems: a person does not let anyone into his inner world, fearing that his weaknesses will be used against him. This situation should be avoided, because excessive alertness forces you to remain in constant tension, which can not but negatively affect the health of the nervous system.