Psychology of Rivalry

Many of the most important competitions in business, politics, sports, and day-to-day social life occur not between strangers who happen to have negatively linked goals, but between parties who have a shared history of notable competitions—that is, between rivals. Despite psychology’s long and rich history of studying competition, the concerted study of rivalry has only been underway for about a decade. This chapter seeks to organize existing rivalry research and guide future investigations by proposing a causal theory that positions shared competitive history as the origin of rivalry; cognitive elaboration as the driving process in the formation of rivalry; a competitive relational schema as the social-cognitive construct that defines rivalry; an expansive view of competition as the proximal consequence of activating rivalry; and behavioral effects with respect to goal pursuit, identity maintenance, and moral decision-making as distal consequences. The first two sections review the seminal development of a relational approach to rivalry and acknowledge empirical challenges in drawing causal conclusions about rivalry. The next three sections describe the proposed causal model, linking a shared competitive history to behavioral consequences as a result of the competitive relational schema. The final sections discuss open questions and opportunities for the future of rivalry research.