… most situations involving social interactions are not clearly defined as competitive or cooperative, and many may in fact contain elements of competition and cooperation
– Richard et al.

What is no good for the hive is no good for the bee
– Marcus Aurelius

On the very day of the Lehman Brothers collapse, Damien Hirst, a contemporary artist, had his artwork sell for $127 million through an auction titled, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever at Sotheby’s London. Of this figure, $17.2 million was from the sale of a dead, stuffed, tiger shark, titled ‘The Kingdom’ which three buyers had competed to buy. The final price was way higher than an initial, already high $11.8 million estimate.

At the risk of oversimplification, the hammer price could be viewed as the coda in a dance between the auction house, potential buyers and seller – a zero-sum game which pits the seller and auction house at one end and potential buyers at the other. The buyers, if they subscribe to this view of how the game is set up, do not show it in their behaviour. They compete with each other and the winner is sometimes left with only a Pyrrhic victory.

Cooperation which results in higher prices overall, is labelled as collusive, anti-competitive market manipulation. Cooperation which results in lower prices overall, is labelled as free market competition and an efficient means of resource distribution. Auctions consist of competitive behaviour amongst buyers leading to higher prices, driven by conceptions of scarcity and exclusivity. While demand drives prices up in other areas of the free market just as it does in auctions, auctions have been set up to drive prices up not down, arguably leaving buyers worse off. This is especially so, if at a later auction, no one is willing to pay such a price for the same artwork.

The classroom has been described as a marketplace of ideas where best ideas emerge through free market competition with minimal intervention from teachers. At first blush, this conception of the classroom is not without attraction in so far as it champions devolution of voice to students. An unintended consequence of this orientation is that the classroom begins to resemble an auction house in which students compete to outdo each other to demonstrate competence before the others and the teacher. Ascendancy over peers sealed with the imprimatur of an adoring teacher appears to be the item on auction.

This is a less than satisfactory state of affairs because it leaves everyone, including the so-called winners the poorer for it. Research has found that children who compete only to outdo their peers lose friendships. The teacher whose sole objective is to have all boats rising, also loses because in a competitive situation, only the winner gets praised and gradually the others will cease to participate, seeing no stake in the endeavour. If no one participates, there can be no discussion, learning will cease and there will be nothing to win. What was initially viewed as zero-sum reveals itself to be in fact negative-sum.

While the deleterious effects of competition on friendships have been documented, competition can be friendly and a means of cooperation toward better ends for all. The term co-opetition serves as a convenient handle to grasp this concept. In this model, students aim not to outdo but to uplift their peers through competition. They cooperate in a duet (one to one and one to many) to raise the other’s game. It is in the interest of all that the base level of competence rises since everyone, including the one ephemerally ahead of the curve at a point in time, reaches greater heights. To achieve a personal best, one’s competitors must give fierce competition.

While students may understand this paradox at an intuitive level, they may find themselves being mean to their peers anyway during a discussion by adopting condescending or otherwise derogatory language. Psychologists have identified various factors which lead to hypercompetitive behaviour amongst students. These include modes of socialization (environment which a child grows up in), parenting/quasi parenting styles (authoritarian – authoritative – permissive) and motivational orientations (extrinsic – intrinsic). A student conditioned with dogma, a punishment and reward approach to elicit desired behaviours and by a competitive environment will lean toward an individualistic, winner- takes – all mentality.

Those who are hypercompetitive are not always unpopular. Interestingly, one study found that in a group of pre-schoolers, boys claimed to prefer having as friends, girls who were competitive and girls claimed to prefer having as friends, boys who were less competitive.

Zero-sum competition though, is not the only way to demonstrate competence. Cooperation and co-opetition too offer compelling opportunity to demonstrate not only competence but also leadership. A student who uses her intellect not to tear down but to support another’s point of view would have demonstrated competence in an inclusive and leaderly way. Indeed, if popularity or ascendancy was the goal, inclusion and not exclusion would be more effective means as Keltner of The Power Paradox has shown.

Students by definition, are at some stage of development and adopting a largely laissez-faire approach to discussions in the classroom might result in less than optimal outcomes. The audible voice of the teacher is still very much a necessary part of the equation.

The teacher taking on the role of facilitator in discussions would have to eradicate the concept of scarcity from students’ minds. In the laudable move to bring the world into the classroom, it might be worth bearing in mind that the classroom, unlike the real world, is a place which does not have to be constrained by limited resources. It can be an environment like Pandora in the movie Avatar, with symbiosis as its core operating principle.

Why walk alone when you can walk together?

The Brain Dojo