Sample Research Proposal on Competition PDF

Preview

Summary

My personal first draft of my research proposal for the big paper due at the end of term....

Description

Ismael Lazrak ASTU 101 PO5 Research Paper Proposal October 25th, 2020 The Impact of Social Media on Competition in Youth In today’s online society, people can act in certain ways without facing the consequences that would be received in the real world. As a result many adolescents using social media are exposed to zero-sum situations, where one party’s gain is another’s loss. Because of this, an individual’s comparison concerns and competitiveness will naturally increase (Garcia et al ., 2013). Social comparison is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Indeed from a very young age and across cultures, comparisons provide information to navigate the world around us (Verduyn et al., 2020) and sets the scene for competition: we compare ourselves to others to assess if we belong, how we are performing and what goals we should be aiming for. As today’s youth has the unique feature of being wired since birth, social comparisons are also “wired” comparisons, that is to say that most, if not all social comparisons, in youth occur in the context of social media(Ahn, 2011). The confluence of a ubiquitous phenomenon (social comparison) with a ubiquitous behavior (social media) warrants a careful investigation of how these two aspects interact and what impact they have on the nature of competition. How does social media promote youth inter-competitiveness rather than intra-competitiveness? In other words, we ask if social media leads youth to compare themselves to others in order to win instead of enabling them to compete within themselves to be better. To understand how social media affects competition, we need to understand different types of competition and their roles. Research points to deleterious effects of social media where comparison amongst youth lead to envy and negative psychological impacts that could only be moderated by external factors, such as the parents or adult family members (Charoensukmongkol,., 2020). In contrast, S  enbel and colleagues demonstrate that competition among college students was driven by comparison within their group rather than the action of strangers outside of their social media group (Senbel et al. , 2014) . Furthermore, these authors show that this inter-competition enabled the creation of friendships and health relationships. It appears that in this case, social media can have a beneficial effect on youth as they engage in positive action. When the motivation for competition transfers from extrinsic goals (here goals are set outside of one self and via the peer-group) to intrinsic rewards (self-esteem), the potential for social media to enhance intra-competitiveness is worth exploring further. My plan is to evaluate how social media can bolster intra competitiveness. Building on the fact that youth regulate themselves based on their peers (Shapiro et al. , 2014), we can explore how this regulation can become independent of peer-comparison and based on self-regulation and personal growth. I would hypothesize that such a spill-over is both desirable and possible. As social media is majoritarily used by youth with close to 75% of youth having one social network affiliation (Shapiro et al., 2014), understanding the factors that favor the transition from inter to intra-competitiveness is crucial and can also inform clinical practice in the face of rising threats related to misuse of social media on youth mental well-being and psychological development.

Annotated Bibliography: Ahn, J. (2011). The effect of social network sites on adolescents' social and academic development: Current theories and controversies. Journal of the American Society for information Science and Technology , 62(8), 1435-1445.

In this peer-reviewed article, Dr. Jun Ahn performed a review of the literature on the effects social network sites such as Facebook, Instagram, have on adolescents development. The review brings different papers from various fields (e.g. social psychology, education, and information science) to highlight pros and cons around the ubiquitous youth participation in social media on how online communities shape attitudes and traits. Charoensukmongkol, P. (2018). The impact of social media on social comparison and envy in teenagers: The moderating role of the parent comparing children and in-group competition among friends. Journal of Child and Family Studies , 27 (1), 69-79. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-017-0872-8 This peer-reviewed article reports on a survey amongst 250 teenage participants. This paper is key to the argument that competition in the form of social comparison is associated with social media use. It does also indicate that positive social comparison is mediated by parents' influence.

Garcia, S. M., Tor, A., & Schiff, T. M. (2013). The psychology of competition: A social comparison perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science , 8(6), 634-650. Retrieved from https://pubmed-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/26173228/ In this peer-reviewed article, the authors provide a framework to delimit the concept of competition by distinguishing individual and situational factors. It explains how the zero-sum concept applies to this proposal. Competitive behavior is defined as the result of social comparison where within a social circle (e.g. group of skaters on Instagram), common comparison concerns (say skating mastery) set the goal that distinguishes winners vs. losers.

Senbel, M., Ngo, V. D., & Blair, E. (2014). Social mobilization of climate change: University students conserving energy through multiple pathways for peer engagement. Journal of Environmental Psychology , 38, 84-93. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-21422-011 While the focus of this paper is mostly around ways to activate mobilization for climate change, this peer-reviewed paper by Senbel and colleagues provides further support to the point that amongst youth social media is the most commonly used platform. Setting up a common goal on social media campaigns, which in this paper was mobilization for climate change solutions, social media naturally triggers inter-competitiveness. Most interestingly within a peer-group, external rewards, which in this paper would be winning the largest momentum for social mobilization, have translated into potential intrinsic rewards as individuals forged new friendships based on finding commonalities in values (doing the “right” thing) that would be more long-lasting. This is a first insight in possible approaches to investigate for the present submitted proposal. Shapiro, L. A. S., & Margolin, G. (2014). Growing up wired: Social networking sites and adolescent psychosocial development. Clinical child and family psychology review , 17(1), 1-18. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3795955 This peer-reviewed paper highlights the role of SNS in adolescents' life. It outlines how social media influences our youth’s development and character. Although the targeted audience(adolescents) state that they use social media to stay in touch with friends, this paper explores how youth compare themselves with each other using social media. This is relevant to my research proposal because it can help explore the question of how to transfer from inter-competition to intra-competition among our modern youth.

Verduyn, P., Gugushvili, N., Massar, K., Täht, K., & Kross, E. (2020). Social comparison on social networking sites. Current Opinion in Psychology . The relationship between SNS(social networking site) and SWB(subjective well being) is researched in this peer-reviewed paper. The main concern that this paper explores is the negative impact that SNSs have in social comparison situations. Users with a tendency to engage in social comparison are especially likely to be negatively impacted by SNSs. This is particularly important for my topic because it outlines a frame for me to explore the negative effects of social media in terms of inter-competition....