Cooperative and Competitive Attitudes During Adolescence and Their Social and Academic Outcomes

Individuals develop diverse social attitudes during adolescence. This study focused on adolescents' cooperative and competitive attitudes from grades 7-11 and their outcomes in grade 12. The sample included 6,908 South Korean adolescents (47.6% girls, mean age = 12.83, range = 12-15). Latent cross-lagged models revealed negative directional associations between cooperative and compet itive attitudes for grades 7-10, but no significant associations for grades 10-11. Cooperative attitudes contributed more to social than academic outcomes, whereas competitive attitudes more positively predicted academic outcomes. The results suggest that educators who support early to mid-adolescents' cooperative or competitive attitudes need to strike a delicate balance as these attitudes do not change independently and both have distinct strengths and weaknesses.