Essay on Cooperation

Essay on Cooperation!

Cooperation is a positive social motive. It is equally significant as competition in motivating a person to reach the goal. Cooperation alongwith competition provides a very healthy signal for the upliftment of the Society.

Various studies have been conducted by sociologists, social psychologists and anthropologists on the effect of cooperation as a social motive. Usually two primary factors determine cooperation. They are, age of the subjects and kinds of material available.

Particularly in case of children of 2-3 years age, cooperation is mostly expressed in play. Ross found that children of 2-3 years of age showed cooperative behaviour more frequently when playing with clay than when playing with blocks.

General observation of children in play ground and school indicate that cooperative play is essential most clearly among the children who were 3 years of age and older. Experimental studies of competition and cooperation develop simultaneously and approximately at about the same age, i.e. after three years of age.

Crawford’s (1937) study on the cooperative behaviour of Chimpanzees is worth mentioning here. Crawford gave three problems to the Chimpanzees. These three problems required the cooperative effort of at least two Chimpanzees for their solution. A single Chimpanzee could not solve any of these problems alone without the help of another Chimpanzee. The Chimpanzees were given to do the tasks alone as well as in pairs.

Results showed that when the animals worked in pairs they could pull a heavier box than what it could when it was in the lone situation. The most interesting observation from this experiment was that Chimpanzees could not learn to cooperate i.e. they could not pull the two boxes at the same time.

This might be due to the fact that these animals might not have learnt to work cooperatively. Even after training they failed to do the work together. It is found that though Chimpanzees are given to pull two boxes at the same time, they fail to do it. Each pulls with regard to the activity of the other Chimpanzee.

After a good amount of training they were not able to coordinate their acts with a single rope. The findings of the above study indicate that cooperation has a long genetic history and one has to learn from the early periods of life to cooperate.

One learns cooperation while playing with others, growing in the family or reading in the schools. The cooperation motive has to be grown by the parents and teachers through proper training and socialization process. Through various factors, pujas, picnics, meetings this motive of cooperation can be encouraged.

When a child is asked to do small bits of work at home, to spare his toys to his younger sibling, to share his books and geometry box with his class fellow sitting near him, he learns to develop the motive of cooperation.

The attitude of cooperation is greatly helpful for national and international integration, peace, amity and understanding, friendship and fellow feeling. The attitude of caring and sharing, give and take, sacrifice and commitment grows out of the feeling of cooperation.

Cooperative and competitive activities are remarkably influenced by cultural set up and social learning. It also grows with age and experience. Study of different cultures show that different cultures stress competitive and cooperative activities.

Competition is emphasized in societies and cultures where position, power or prestige is achieved competitively. For example, among the Kwakiutl tribe there is severe competition whereas among the Juni Indians of the New Mexico there is very little competition.

In societies where rivalry plays a greater role than competition there is more threat and violence. Every individual looks upon his failure or unsuccess as a humiliation which they think can be relieved only by bringing similar humiliation to others.

Secondly, the success of the outgroup or otherman is looked upon as a threat to one’s own security, status and promotion. So he tries to pull up and bring down the reputation and status of the otherman by various malafied means. Leg pulling in many cases is due to rivalry. In all seriousness competition should be encouraged and rivalry should be discouraged for a healthy and happy society.

Zealousy is a basic factor in rivalry. A person should try to aspire and prosper on the basis of his ability and character. The attitude of rivalry in any society should be discouraged. An underdeveloped or a developing country can be turned to a developed country provided the motive of competitiveness is encouraged in persons from the early childhood. Since excessive competition also breeds insecurity and discontentment, competition along with cooperation is essential.

For social integration, social harmony, social progress and in the interest of a better, healthy and happy society and for a mentally healthy, and secured person, judicious competition is essential. Competition based on ability and capacity should be encouraged. Rivalry should be discouraged at any rate. A person has not only responsibilities and duties for himself, but for the society.

A healthy and happy society consists of persons with positive attitudes towards life and with motives which can bring progress of the individual and ultimately progress of the country. Violent cartoons produced no change in inter personal aggressive behaviour.

Several other investigations and studies have revealed a positive relationship between the amount of exposure to televised violence and the degree to which children use aggressive behaviour as a means of solving interpersonal conflicts. In a longitudinal study conducted by Iron and others (1972) TV viewing habits of more than 800 children were studied when they were eight to nine years of age.

Information was collected about each child viewing time, the types of programmes viewed, family characteristics and aggressive qualities of the viewers noted by classmates and peers. One of the major findings was that boys who preferred TV programmes with a fair amount of violence were much more aggressive in their interpersonal relationship than those who preferred programmes which exhibited little or no evidence. This indicates that perhaps children who are more aggressive prefer to watch violent TV programmes.

Ten years after a follow up study of the above was done on more than 400 subjects of the first study. They were interviewed about their preferred TV programmes. Also a test was administered on them which measured delinquent tendencies.

Thirdly their peers were also asked to rate the aggressiveness in their behaviour. Findings indicated that high exposure to violence on TV at the age of nine was positively correlated with aggressiveness in boys at nineteen years of age.

Thus scope to increase aggressiveness during childhood has a tremendous positive impact on the aggressiveness at a later age. Aggressiveness thus accumulates with the growth of age provided the child gets scope to visualize aggressive behaviour and imitate it continuously and repeatedly. However, the study also revealed that girls imitate aggressive behaviour less than boys. This is supported by the findings of several other studies.

In view of these facts, enough efforts should be made to reorganise and censor the TV programmes, violence and hostility should not be shown so nakedly in public through electronic medias.

Social learning theory also holds that state of arousal or anger can be reduced by behaviour which is non-reinforcive than the aggressive and hostile actions.

Aggression can also be reduced effectively in highly aggressive boys by allowing them to observe models who behave in a restrained and non-aggressive manner in the face of provocation. This can be effectively done by the Television and movie industries.

If they can be shown that obstacles can be overcomed successfully by non-violent manner, they can learn the same. Moreover, aggression in the society can be removed by careful management of needs and frustrations of every person.

As discussed earlier, a lot of aggressive behaviour and hostility is limited from various social situations. Particularly during the formative period of one’s personality this is imitated more quickly. It is said by social psychologists that if the aggressive behaviour of children go unchecked or unrestricted in the early formative years, they are more probable to be reinforced and continue in his adult life.

When tension due to frustration is released by some other ways than hostile behaviour, one feels relaxed and this is obviously reinforced in similar situations in future. If aggressive behaviour is mildly penalized, it will be non-reinforce, the child will learn not to repeat it in future. But on the contrary, if aggressive behaviour is rewarded in real situation, it may reinforce the aggressive act.

When the child is beating his playmate and parents do not object to this, the child is reinforced increase his aggressive act in future. But if children are constantly punished for their aggressive acts, they were more likely to be aggressive than becoming submissive.

Children usually consider their parents and teachers as models in all their behaviours. If the parents or the teachers show more and more aggression in their day to day activities, the children feel encouraged and justified to indulge in violent acts.

The life histories of several convicts and criminals in jails have shown that those who have been jailed for their aggressive acts most of them were severely punished during childhood and punished very often. That is why, there is a saying that a women who has been severely punished by her mother-in-law, when she becomes a mother-in-law also likes to punish her daughter-in-laws.

A child can only learn to control his aggressive behaviour when non-aggressive, amiable and socially suitable models are presented to him.

It is very often said that angry parents have angry children. Parents can teach their children to react to various problems, situation and frustrations in day to day life through non-aggressive ways. There are also other reactions to frustration, like sublimation, rationalization etc. which can be used while reacting to a frustrating situation.

Children coming from broken homes, foster parents, from parent with marital discords, frequent quarrel, parents having no time to spare for their children, react to various social situations in an inadequate and hostile manner.

These circumstances and parental models do not inspire them for positive values of human life like love, respect, amiability, sociability etc. They in turn develop negative values like hatred, suspicion, sarcasm, destructive tendency etc. which are allied to aggression.

So the parents must try to be good models for their children, so as to breed contentment and happiness in them. If every parent can try to develop the personality of their children in socially acceptable manner, aggressiveness can be controlled to a remarkable degree.

The social health of people can be improved and the social climate of any country can be enriched, tension and violence can be minimised, international tension and cold war can be reduced to a great extent if the content of aggressive reactions can be minimised in the behaviour of every social being.

Though aggression cannot be totally abolished from society, which also should not be, it can be controlled and prevented to a great extent to bring social peace, happiness, amity and harmony.