Event Title

“I go to a crazy competitive HS and I hate it”: A Reflexive Thematic Analysis of High School Competitive Suffering Using Reddit

Location

Science Center: Bent Corridor

Document Type

Poster

Start Date

4-28-2023 12:00 PM

End Date

4-28-2023 2:00 PM

Abstract

Competitive suffering describes a situation in which one student shares their suffering with a peer, and instead of being met with compassion, advice, or simple listening, that peer decides to one-up their peer’s suffering. Though heavily talked about informally on social media, in blogs, and conversationally, competitive suffering has not been defined or studied in a psychological setting. The goal of this thesis was to conduct exploratory research on competitive suffering using a qualitative framework. To get a broad spectrum of participants, I collected data through the Reddit forum “r/highschool” and used a reflexive thematic analysis approach to analyze the text of 32 posts. Through this, suffering in a high school context was operationalized and four themes were identified and discussed: Quantifiable Reason for Suffering, Helplessness, Attribution, and Motivation for Posting. Using these, a theoretical model for competitive suffering was created. Implications include working towards providing school counselors and teachers a greater understanding of detrimental competition culture, communication to students that mistakes are recoverable, and high school students opting for compassion, not competition, between each other.

Keywords:

Competitive suffering, High school, Qualitative

Major

Psychology

Project Mentor(s)

Cindy Frantz, Psychology
Christine Wu, Psychology
Travis Wilson, Psychology

2023

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Apr 28th, 12:00 PM Apr 28th, 2:00 PM

“I go to a crazy competitive HS and I hate it”: A Reflexive Thematic Analysis of High School Competitive Suffering Using Reddit

Science Center: Bent Corridor

Competitive suffering describes a situation in which one student shares their suffering with a peer, and instead of being met with compassion, advice, or simple listening, that peer decides to one-up their peer’s suffering. Though heavily talked about informally on social media, in blogs, and conversationally, competitive suffering has not been defined or studied in a psychological setting. The goal of this thesis was to conduct exploratory research on competitive suffering using a qualitative framework. To get a broad spectrum of participants, I collected data through the Reddit forum “r/highschool” and used a reflexive thematic analysis approach to analyze the text of 32 posts. Through this, suffering in a high school context was operationalized and four themes were identified and discussed: Quantifiable Reason for Suffering, Helplessness, Attribution, and Motivation for Posting. Using these, a theoretical model for competitive suffering was created. Implications include working towards providing school counselors and teachers a greater understanding of detrimental competition culture, communication to students that mistakes are recoverable, and high school students opting for compassion, not competition, between each other.