Interpersonal Competitiveness

What it measures

Eight items measure the extent to which a person is motivated by outperforming others and winning in competitive situations. Chan and Briers (2019) borrowed the Interpersonal Competitiveness subscale from Griffin-Pierson's (1990) Competitiveness Questionnaire, which demonstrated unidimensionality, internal consistency, and several forms of validity in its original development with 326 U.S. MTurk participants.

Response format

5-point Likert (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree; from Griffin-Pierson 1990; format used by Chan & Briers not stated)

Scale items

• I perform better when I am competing against someone rather than when I am the only one striving for a goal.
• I do not feel that winning is important in both work and games. (r)
• When I win an award or game it means that I am the best compared to everyone else that was playing. It is only fair that the best person win the game.
• In school, I always liked to be the first one finished with a test.
• I have always wanted to be better than others.
• When nominated for an award, I focus on how much better or worse the other candidates' qualifications are as compared to mine.
• I would want an A because that means that I did better than other people.
• Because it is important that a winner is decided, I do not like to leave a game unfinished.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Item 2 is reverse-scored. The response format used by Chan and Briers (2019) was not described; the original Griffin-Pierson (1990) scale used a 5-point format. Item 3 is unusually long and contains two sentences — researchers may wish to evaluate whether it functions as a single item.

Citation

Chan, E., & Briers, B. (2019). It's the end of the competition: When social comparison is not always motivating for goal achievement. Journal of Consumer Research, 46(2), 351–370.

Keywords