Views on Competition by Academic Disciplines

Perspectives on competition tend to differ by academic discipline. The social sciences, humanities, and education fields, which emphasize egalitarianism, view competition negatively and as something to be discouraged (e.g., Green, Reference Green1988; Sampson, Reference Sampson1975; Tam & Jiang, Reference Tam and Jiang2014). In contrast, in economics and business, where innovation and productivity are prioritized, competition is essential for creating new resources (e.g., Callander & Matouschek, Reference Callander and Matouschek2022; Federal Trade Commission, n.d.; Sowell, Reference Sowell2014; Tang, Reference Tang2006). Of significant note, while competition is a psychological phenomenon, little scholarly attention has been paid in psychology to the psychological aspect of competition (Garcia et al., Reference Garcia, Tor and Schiff2013). This lack of scholarly attention and effort in defining competitive attitudes and behaviors has resulted in limited research on the development and validation of scales measuring competitive attitudes and behaviors (Menesini et al., Reference Menesini, Tassi and Nocentini2018; Orosz et al., Reference Orosz, Tóth-Király, Büki, Ivaskevics, Bőthe and Fülöp2018; Wang et al., Reference Wang, Wang and Liu2018).

Given that psychology presumably seeks an unbiased perspective of mental processes and behaviors through different lenses, the field should strive to provide a comprehensive and balanced perspective of various phenomena related to competition. However, the field of psychology, often classified as a social science and incorporating much of the content from social science disciplines, rarely provides an economic or business perspective of phenomena such as competition. This is not surprising, as psychology undergraduate and graduate curricula generally do not include economics or business courses, as is the case in other social science disciplines. With the lack of opportunity to learn about economic or business perspectives, stakeholders, including psychologists, would (inadvertently) fail to see an economic or business dimension in various psychological phenomena. Thus, learning about the negative aspects of competition during undergraduate or graduate studies will lead to competition being presumed to be a negative trait.

Furthermore, the extant literature fails to see competition from a political perspective, despite competition occurring in political arenas across systems and cultures throughout history. Failing to see the broader aspects of competition, academia tends to focus on a particular aspect of competitive dynamics and advocate this perspective according to the prevailing ideology of their academic field. As a result, scholars and students have developed a biased perspective of competition dynamics.

Regardless of the diverse viewpoints of competition, this book provides compelling evidence that competition occurs across systems, cultures, and eras, as it is a natural phenomenon in humans desiring to survive and thrive. It has been widely assumed that competition is fostered and/or rooted in Western society, individualistic cultures and capitalist systems (e.g., Inglehart & Oyserman, Reference Inglehart, Oyserman, Vinken, Soeters and Ester2004; Oyserman et al., Reference Oyserman, Coon and Kemmelmeier2002; Wu & Talhelm, Reference Wu, Talhelm, Garcia, Tor and Elliot2023). The human need to survive and desire to thrive are universal across time, suggesting that competition is not tied to a particular society, culture, or system. This book examines competition dynamics in non-Western societies, collectivist cultures, and socialist systems.

The integration of the central arguments of the following chapters will provide new insights into how competition occurs and how different types of competition yield various outcomes. This book, seeking to provide multiple perspectives beyond psychology in understanding competition dynamics, diverges from typical manuscripts in psychology journals that investigate psychological constructs (e.g., self-esteem, anxiety, frustration) to articulate mental processes and outcomes. Instead, this book focuses on various perspectives that have been relatively less studied in psychology as well as other social sciences, humanities, and education fields. I believe exploring such unseen, shadowed, and unfocused dimensions is necessary to identify recommended practices and develop future research areas pertaining to a ubiquitous phenomenon – competition on our planet. Revealing such hidden aspects would help readers develop a more comprehensive, balanced, and unbiased perspective on competition dynamics, which should be a central goal of psychology and other fields in the social sciences, humanities, and education.

In Chapter 2, Lee, Park, and Jo compare how citizens perceive competition between Asian and Western societies using the World Values Survey from Wave 2 (1989–1993) to Wave 7 (2017–2020). The authors found that citizens living in China and Vietnam, considered authoritarian, socialist, and collectivist societies, show the highest level of pro-competition attitudes, followed by those living in democratic, capitalist, and individualist Western societies, while those living in democratic, capitalist, and collectivist Asian regions demonstrate the lowest level of pro-competition attitudes. This finding suggests that (a) competitive attitudes are not necessarily derived from a capitalist, free-market system, as those living in China and Vietnam are significantly more likely to endorse competition than those in the Western and Asian regions that embrace capitalist, free-market systems; (b) competitive attitudes are not necessarily tied to individualist cultures, given the high level of pro-competition attitudes among the Chinese and Vietnamese; (c) competitive attitudes are likely to be associated with a region’s economic growth level, in that China and Vietnam are classified as developing countries, while the other Western and Asian regions in the study are developed countries; and (d) developed countries with collectivist cultures are less likely to endorse competition than developed countries with individualist cultures, given the lowest level of pro-competition attitudes in developed, collectivist Asian regions. Synthesizing these four arguments, competitive attitudes are likely to be associated with a region’s economic well-being. Chapter 2 found these arguments were supported by a significant correlation between one’s attitudes toward competition and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita based on the selected regions’ data. China and Vietnam, seeking to become developed countries, are more likely to endorse competition than other developed countries that have already secured economic wellbeing. Economic wellbeing refers to the condition of individuals meeting their basic survival needs and a condition to thrive. In this sense, competitive attitudes are likely to strengthen when individuals aim to survive and thrive, implying that competition is derived from humans’ fundamental needs to survive and advance. In this chapter, the authors address the myth that meritocracy competition is rooted in. Contrary to the overwhelming assumption that meritocratic competition is rooted in the West, historical evidence shows its origin in ancient China dating back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) in a civil service testing program used to evaluate government officials’ work performance and select government officials for promotion. Furthermore, from the Tang dynasty (618–907) through the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912), the practice of meritocracy was implemented to select the most proficient government officials through the Chinese imperial examinations, thereby spreading to its neighboring countries, including ancient Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The meritocratic competition system was further introduced and flourished in the West in the 1800s. Historical evidence demonstrates that meritocratic competition is not derived from the West but likely from ancient China. Furthermore, Chapter 2 describes broader aspects of competition. For example, a dominant viewpoint has been established in the social sciences, humanities, and education fields that competition would benefit only a few high achievers, resulting in inequality. However, from an economic and business perspective, competition fosters innovation and promotes consumer well-being, as private businesses restrict the formation of cartels that monopolize market prices and maximize profits, while private businesses strive to attract consumers to purchase their products or services by developing high-quality products offered at lower prices compared to their rivals. The authors further provided a political view of competition dynamics that is ubiquitous across systems and cultures.

In Chapter 3, Lee conducts a systematic review of the literature pertaining to competition in former socialist countries that represent the Soviet Union and the Central and Eastern European countries prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The former socialist countries utilized competition for their rapid economic growth and to reduce poverty through the Stakhanovite movement while differentiating socialist from capitalist competition. Nevertheless, socialist competition was not that different from capitalist competition in the sense that the socialist authorities sought to motivate their workers to work hard and excel like their role model, Alexei G. Stakhanov, who gained monetary rewards and political recognition. Notably, socialist competition fostered a culture of fear by punishing workers who criticized or were not actively engaged in the Stakhanovite movement. The punishment was to accuse them of anti-Soviet behaviors and sabotage and have them arrested, although many were arrested without objective evidence on the charged crimes. Those who were arrested were (assumed to be) less loyal to the Soviet regime based on their social origins (e.g., Russia’s bourgeois capitalist class) or because they failed to meet outputs norms. In this sense, the Stakhanovite movement, which was grounded in competition, served as a political and economic propaganda tool to control their own people, stabilize the Stalin regime, and advance the socialist economic system. The punishment of people who strayed away from the Stakhanovite movement peaked during Stalin’s Great Purge (1936–1938), reflecting that the Stakhanovite movement was a repressive practice to purge non-Stalinists in the name of economic growth and socialist advance. The Stakhanovite movement increased labor productivity by 82 percent in the middle of the 1930s, yet the increase was temporary. An increased number of workers who outperformed and became another Stakhanovite led to a wage increase greater than the increase in outputs, resulting in wage inflation. The wage inflation occurred because individuals’ wage increase rate was not calculated as comparable to their increase in output. Without scientific criteria, those who exceeded the Stakhanovite output norms gained large amounts of compensation and were promoted. With wage inflation, the Stakhanovite movement failed to contribute to the Soviet Union’s economic growth. From a psychological standpoint, Lee argued that the movement could not yield long-term productivity and economic growth as it was a repressive tool to foster fear of persecution among workers. As a result, the movement stimulated controlled motivation rather than autonomous motivation. Lee’s literature review shows that controlled motivation (exclusively shaped by external forces such as rewards and punishments) causes stress in workers and results in low-quality performance.

Beyond the competition for Stakhanovite status among workers, Chapter 3 further articulates competition for daily necessities among ordinary citizens because of the pervasive shortage of goods. The shortage was due to the following reasons. First, the socialist authorities determined the price and output level of goods with a lack of information about the needs of consumers. Second, under the centrally planned economic system, the socialist authorities planned the pervasive goods shortages in a market that enabled the authorities to exercise their political power through taking bribes from consumers (to obtain goods). Third, as privately owned enterprises were illegal in the centrally planned economic system, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) dominated the production of consumer goods. However, SOEs lacked incentives to minimize risks of financial losses because the central government controlled and managed the SOEs, and hence was responsible for their financial losses. This was referred to as the soft budget constraint (SBC). SOEs were more interested in securing resources and privileges (e.g., permission to charge higher prices and grants) from the central government than innovating their management and operations to meet the consumer needs. Managers of SOEs were appointed based on their loyalty and commitment toward the Communist party rather than merit, leading to competition for government resources and privileges. This, in turn, yielded another type of competition – that for daily necessities among consumers due to the pervasive shortage of goods. Furthermore, a culture of rent-seeking behaviors was widespread as individuals lacked the incentive to create new resources by developing their own merits. Instead, they were more likely to flatter the socialist authorities by demonstrating their political loyalties and commitments toward advancing socialism. Chapter 3 argues that, while competition for private enterprises rarely existed under the centrally planned economic system, the socialist system generated competition for (necessary) goods among consumers because of the pervasive shortage of goods as well as competition for government resources and privileges among SOEs because of the lack of incentives to create new resources.

In Chapter 4, Lee systematically reviews competition in communist one-party states China and Vietnam. Both countries transformed their planned economic system into a socialist market system to escape from chronic poverty and accelerate economic growth. China implemented economic reform in 1978, while Vietnam did so in 1986. Prior to reforms, both countries suffered from poverty and a pervasive shortage of goods similar to other former socialist countries reviewed in Chapter 3, causing competition for survival and resources among ordinary citizens. After the economic reforms, the central governments permitted private enterprises (PEs), consisting of domestic private enterprises and foreign-invested enterprises. Competition also arose within PEs and between PEs and SOEs for market share, which challenged loss-making SOEs’ survival and urged SOEs to restructure their organizations. Growing competition allowed both countries to escape chronic poverty and boost economic growth. The positive economic outcomes drove them to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). After acceding to the WTO in 2001, China became the world’s manufacturing leader due to its cheap labor costs. Vietnam’s accession to the WTO in 2007 enabled it to serve as an alternative global manufacturing factory based on its cheap labor costs and its geographical proximity to China. Since both countries joined the WTO, their GDP growth doubled, while Vietnam was still behind China in global supply chains. This is likely because Vietnamese economic reform, beginning in 1986, was more ideological and less market-oriented than China’s. Moreover, Vietnam’s substantial imports from China yielded large trade deficits with China. Nevertheless, since the US–China trade war began in 2018, China’s market share in certain sectors of the global market has been falling, while Vietnam has emerged as a significant alternative for global manufacturing. Furthermore, many US manufacturing companies began to relocate their factories from China to Mexico because of Mexico’s geographic proximity to the United States, cheaper labor costs than China’s, and tariff-free trade under the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). The relocation of factories challenges China’s privileged position in the global market competition arena for labor-intensive manufacturing industries, showing that competition does not permit absolute hegemony. Concerning competition’s non-permissibility of absolute domination, Chapter 4 notes that China and Vietnam were considered low-income countries prior to their economic reforms. However, their participation in global market competition allowed them to escape chronic poverty as China became an upper-middle-income country and Vietnam became a middle-income country, illustrating that market competition reduces global income inequality between poor and rich countries. This challenges the long-held assumption of the linear relationship between competition and inequality.

In Chapter 5, Lee articulates various types of competition in North Korea around the country’s Great Famine in the mid-1990s when the country lost its trading partner and faced economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Great Famine mirrors the extreme shortage of food, which caused many North Koreans to suffer from starvation and fiercely compete for food among them to survive. Famine survivors crossed the China–North Korea border to search for food and learned how to feed themselves and make earnings to survive during the collapse of the socialist Public Distribution System (PDS). They smuggled consumer goods such as food and daily necessities from China and sold them in a black market (called jangmadang in North Korea), allowing them to feed themselves and build their own business to accumulate wealth. However, such commercial activities are illegal in North Korea, where individuals are prohibited from having property rights. As such, North Koreans would bribe the communist authorities to engage in such commercial activities, which, in reality, is the only means of feeding themselves among most North Koreans as PDS food rations were no longer provided to the majority of them. The commercial activities that occurred in black markets refer to a hidden economy that has been the core economic engine to meet the basic needs of North Koreans, including the ruling elites. Entities engaging in commercial activities are known as shadow private enterprises (SPEs) that systemize the country’s hidden economy as they operate based on market principles. In contrast, various types of SPEs exist depending on the degree of control by the central government and the status of being officially registered as SOEs. Beyond the hidden market competition for survival, invisible competition for safety and well-being occurs through ordinary citizens bribing the communist authorities to prevent them from being punished and to survive through commercial activities. The more North Koreans pay bribes to the communist authorities, the better they secure their safety and wellbeing. Other than the internal competition for survival, safety, and wellbeing, North Korea competes with South Korea and its allies, such as the United States, by prioritizing the country’s military power and developing nuclear weapons, considered an ideological competition. Chapter 5 demonstrates the different types of competition under communist rule in North Korea, questioning the conventional assumption that competition is rooted or fostered in capitalist, free-market systems. Chapter 5 further describes that the country’s ruling elite is reluctant to transform its economic system into a more market-oriented one by opening up their borders, as did China and Vietnam. The author argues that the ruling elite group might be reluctant to change for fear of losing their privileges as a more market-oriented system could empower an emerging business elite (known as don-ju in North Korea) and eventually threaten the current ruling group’s power. The ruling elites’ resistance to changing the existing system in North Korea is not unique; as described in Chapter 3, the ruling elites in the former socialist countries, including the USSR, were also unwilling to move toward a market-oriented system. Resistance to change an existing system is translated to conservatism, which challenges the long-held assumption that conservatism is equated with neoliberalism. Indeed, as Chapters 3 and 5 demonstrate, socialists become conservatives once they become the ruling elites.

Chapter 6 begins with Lee’s argument that competition has rarely been discussed or investigated from a political perspective, despite competition being ubiquitous in political arenas across systems, cultures, and times. In a liberal democratic system, political leaders are elected based on citizens’ voting as every citizen has the right to vote for a particular political leader who represent their identities or preferences. Elections suggest that competition among politicians is essential to operating a liberal democratic system principled by pluralism, such that it is legalized. On the other hand, in a totalitarian system, the liberal democratic voting system principled by pluralism is inoperable in that the justice of the totalitarian regime is absolute, pluralism is unacceptable, and those who criticize the regime are accused of a crime. Namely, a totalitarian system illegalizes competition among politicians. Nevertheless, (invisible) competition within the circle of ruling elites occurs to seize supreme power, while the winners from the political competition purge their potential rivals on charges of anti-revolutionary acts or corruption.

Chapter 6 focuses on political competition in (former) totalitarian countries, including (former) socialist countries and Nazi Germany, which assures that competition is not tied to a particular system like a democratic, free-market system but rather is more related to individuals’ survival and well-being. Of note, Nazi Germany was a one-party fascist, totalitarian state under Hitler’s dictatorship along with a mixed economy that combined a market economy with a centrally planned economy, suggesting that the Nazis did not completely advocate either a socialist or capitalist system. The mixed economy allowed the Nazis to control all economic activities and assets earned by market competition among private enterprises in favor of the Nazi’s political agenda and racial ideology. Most literature has documented that the Nazis were regarded as a far-right wing, while, from an economic standpoint, the movement was not completely aligned with neoliberalism or a free-market system. Furthermore, Hitler purged both right- and left-wing politicians who dissented or opposed his political agenda; and he did not describe himself as a right-wing politician. A synthesis of the literature pertaining to the Nazi and (former) socialists suggests that a right-wing politics party, nationalism, or conservatism is not necessarily tied to neoliberalism or a free-market system, while it could be aligned with any type of economic system or ideology, including a mixed economy, socialism, or a planned economic system. As already addressed in Chapters 3 and 5, Chapter 6’s finding that right-wing politics or conservatism is not always attached to a particular ideology or system questions our presumption that right-wing or conservatism is compatible with neoliberalism, capitalism, or the free-market system. Thus, political competition within the ruling elites are not rooted in a particular ideology or system but is more likely associated with individuals’ survival and wellbeing needs.

In Chapter 6, the political competition mirrors conflicts between divergent viewpoints, while the divergent viewpoints are from individual differences in various domains, including experiences, backgrounds, and personality. Individual differences in beliefs may be about which system is more just or effective at facilitating their survival and wellbeing. Such divergent beliefs are not unrelated to divergence in self-interests for survival and wellbeing needs. Furthermore, the collapse of communism and Nazism prompted human evolution toward signifying individuals’ freedom, rights, and equal opportunities for all, regardless of their personal backgrounds or social identities, such as socioeconomic status, race or ethnicity, and religion. Chapter 6 argues that, along with the political competition tied to one’s self-interest for survival and wellbeing, human evolution as a result of political competition echoes Darwin’s theory of evolution.

In Chapter 7, Eshleman Latimer provides a historical overview of the Soviet Union’s investment in sport psychology to win competitions in international sporting games, particularly the Olympic games. The Soviet Union became interested in investing research on sport psychology since it placed second to the United States in its first Olympics in 1952. Chapter 7 introduces Puni’s (Reference Puni1969, Reference Puni1973) theoretical model of Psychological Preparation for Competition (PCC) that had been extensively applied to coaching approaches in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, when ideological competition between capitalist and communist countries was salient. PCC integrated individualistic coaching techniques tailored to each athlete’s personal characteristics with communist moral values, which likely drove Soviet athletes to maximize their own strengths in international sport competition arenas for the sake of the Soviet Union. At that time, winning in international sport games symbolized the superiority of a country’s ideology, and competition in the international sport arenas mirrored global ideological competition. The sport competition articulated in Chapter 7 is another example of counter-evidence to the conventional assumption that competition is rooted in the capitalist, free-market system.

In Chapter 8, Lee, Park, and Jo investigate (a) competitive attitudes between North Korean refugees (NKRs) and South Koreans (SKs) after taking into account social comparison concerns, cultural values, gender, and socioeconomic status; (b) factors contributing to the competitive attitudes; and (c) cultural values of NKRs and SKs based on Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions. NKRs exhibited a significantly higher level of competitive attitudes than SKs, while the data show that, regardless of the participants’ home country, the more people engaged in social comparisons, the higher they showed competitive attitudes. NKRs’ higher level of collectivism contributed to their higher level of competitive attitudes, which may challenge the widely-held assumption that individualism enhances competitive attitudes. This chapter provides a comparison of cultural values of NKRs and SKs based on Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions of (a) individualism vs. collectivism, (b) power distance, (c) uncertainty avoidance, (d) masculinity vs. femininity, (e) long-term vs. short-term orientation, and (f) indulgence vs. restraint. NKRs went through a life-threatening journey from North to South Korea and faced challenges in adjusting to their new home, South Korea, as well as had lived under authoritarian communist rule, experiences that are different from SKs who participated in this study. The authors argue that such different experiences engender a notable difference in competitive attitudes and cultural values between NKRs and SKs.

In Chapter 9, Park describes a visible but unspoken competition that occurred in an elementary school in North Korea during the country’s Great Famine in the mid-1990s. Park, who migrated from North Korea to South Korea in 2006, lived through North Korea’s Great Famine during childhood and a life-threatening migration journey during early adolescence. Park articulated three types of competition based on her lived experiences in North Korea. Teachers fostered a competitive learning environment to motivate their students to study hard by publicizing students’ performance scores from the first to the last rank. Park also observed that there had been competition among peers in collecting materials (e.g.,10 kilograms of papers, apricot stones, copper, rabbit skins) as students were required to submit materials to the school to distribute to military and the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). This requirement was named a “mini assignment” (komagwaje in Korean). Students from privileged, wealthy backgrounds had no problem submitting the materials and completing this assignment, while those from underprivileged, low-income backgrounds could hardly complete the assignment. Those who failed to do so received a lower grade in the communist ethics subject as they were judged as a student who was lacking loyalty to the regime and patriotism for the country. In North Korea, those who received perfect scores in all subjects except the communist ethics subject could not maintain their top student status, while students’ grades in the communist ethics subject depended on parents’ socioeconomic status. Park observed that parents competed with each other to win over home teachers’ favoritism of their children through gift-giving to make their children leaders in the school, as those with leadership positions are eligible to become a WPK member. While gift-giving could be perceived as a sign of respect for teachers, frequent gift-giving in exchange for favoritism is a form of bribery. As bribery is an acceptable social norm in North Korea, parents with economic power are heavily involved in their children’s educational processes and outcomes through bribing teachers. As background, teachers were struggling to make ends meet without bribery, as teachers had not been paid during the Great Famine when Park went to elementary school. Under the North Korea caste system, known as Songbun, equal opportunities for educational and career development are not legitimated, meaning that those with excellent academic grades were often restricted from attending (prestigious) four-year universities if their social class was categorized as “wavering” and “hostile” classes whose ancestors were considered formerly privileged groups (e.g., merchants, factory owners, traders, landlords) or anti-socialists before the establishment of North Korea. This chapter reflects that the caste system, which intends to advance socialism, contributes to the widening socioeconomic gap and inequality in North Korea. The caste system allows the privileged to maintain political and economic power, reproducing class hierarchies. The author felt that all competition (she had observed and experienced during childhood) had been fostered to strengthen North Koreans’ loyalty to the regime and consolidate the three-generation lineage of the Kim family as the regime’s stability is a cornerstone of maintaining the privileges and powers of socialist privileged groups.

In Chapter 10, Jo describes her lived experiences in parallel with the history of socialist mass movements embracing competition in North Korea. Jo lived in North Korea for about 30 years during her school years, workforce participation, and North Korea’s Great Famine. While living in North Korea, from school age years through the Great Famine, a range of authority figures from teachers to government officials fostered competition to motivate their students or workers to study or work hard. The competition aimed to achieve collective, socialist goals such as economic productivity for the country, loyalty to WPK, three generations of Kim family rule, and military strength, while de-systemizing to achieve each individual’s personal goals. The collective, socialist goals have been articulated through various socialist movements, including Chollima (“Horse Running a Thousand Miles”) movement, Red Flag Movement for Three-Revolutions (referring to revolutions for Socialist Ideology, Technology, and Culture), and Our (North Korean)-Style Socialist Movement. As a student and worker who participated in various socialist movements, the author studied and worked hard to get better grades, go to a better college, and be assigned a better job than the others, all in the hope of climbing the social ladder. The author reflects that the socialist movements tend to trigger North Koreans to build a strong competitive mindset. She was no exception as she strived to win competitions to achieve upward social mobility in North Korea’s caste system, known as Songbun. For example, the North Korean regime awarded exemplary institutions that demonstrated a strong commitment to the Three Revolutions Red Flag Movement, when the author of Chapter 10, Jo, was an elementary school student in 1982. To win the renowned award, all school students had to achieve academic grades of “honors” or higher in a series of national examinations and be proficient at performing at least one musical instrument and athletic sport. The national examinations cover general academic subjects (e.g., math, physics, chemistry, Korean language, foreign language) and political and revolutionary history of the three-generational leadership of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un. The general academic competency represented “intellectual virtue,” while “moral virtue” was measured by political and revolutionary history competencies. Music and athletic competency mirrored “physical virtue.” The intellectual, moral, and physical virtues were the trio of virtues required for all students to win the award. Jo and her classmates studied hard to pass the national examinations and practiced gymnastics and small drums in an outdoor environment even under harsh weather conditions. All competition related to the socialist mass movements (that she had been exposed to) were systematized through group-based projects, reflecting that an individual’s personal achievement was rarely valued or even denounced. Nevertheless, the author recalled that individuals who sacrificed for WPK or the socialist country were highly recognized as “youth heroes,” serving as youth role models. The author believed that North Korea’s socialist mass movements played a critical role in continuing to maintain its totalitarian system today, despite the Great Famine in the mid-1990s, the inefficiency of its planned economy, and chronic economic disasters. On the other hand, the author observed that North Koreans began to develop competitive mindsets for their own survival (that resonate with the “survival of the fittest” mindsets) after they experienced the Great Famine and the collapse of the food rationing system in the mid-1990s. The author questions whether the effect of socialist mass movements on building solidarity in present-day North Korean society is just as strong as in past-day North Korean society, when the food rationing system was functioning.

In Chapter 11, I respond to reflective questions pertaining to Chapters 2–10. These reflections encourage readers to identify whether there is a gap between their beliefs and the evidence in this edited volume regarding the sources and consequences of competition. Furthermore, the reflective questions allow readers to inquire how the central arguments of Chapters 2–10 are interconnected. Lastly, such connections provide insights into how competition is linked to the human need to survive and the desire to prosper throughout history, across regions, cultures, and systems. Those who engage with this book can see that dismantling a particular system or culture, which has been widely assumed to intensify competition and cause inequality, does not necessarily result in less competition and more egalitarianism. Instead, it could intensify various types of competition (e.g., competition for daily necessities) and lead to less egalitarianism. This is because humans have always sought to survive and look for opportunities for upward social mobility across regions, cultures, systems, and times. In fact, the ideas or actions of dismantling per se are translated into “competition” against privileged groups within an incumbent system or dominant culture, while such ideas or actions are rooted in the needs of unprivileged groups to survive and their desire for social mobility.