A Korean Study Ties Competition to Lower Life Satisfaction

Young Koreans who define themselves by beating other people report lower life satisfaction than those who chase their own goals and nurture real friendships. That is the takeaway from a new study that surveyed thousands of young South Koreans about how they think about competition — and it lands at a moment when life satisfaction has become a national conversation in the country.

The research, led by Yoo Seung-hee, an assistant professor at the College of General Education at Kookmin University, appeared in the latest issue of the Korean Journal of Youth Studies, an academic journal published by the National Youth Policy Institute, which came out on September 25, 2026, according to the Seoul Economic Daily's report. It drew on a 2022 survey by the institute that covered 2,271 Gen Z respondents — middle school, high school and university students born between 1996 and 2003 — alongside 1,300 millennials born between 1983 and 1995 who were employed or running their own businesses.

To measure competitive attitudes, participants rated statements such as "It bothers me when others do better than I do," "It is important to do something better than others," "Competition is natural" and "Winning is everything," the report said. The more importance respondents placed on comparing themselves with others and coming out ahead, the lower their life satisfaction tended to be. Those who valued making their own choices and guarding their autonomy over constant comparison — and who cared about equal relationships, the happiness of friends and colleagues, and simply enjoying cooperation — scored higher instead.

Why autonomy and belonging lift life satisfaction

The pattern is less about rejecting ambition than about where it is aimed. The researchers argue the findings make it hard to dismiss the millennial and Gen Z cohorts as purely self-interested individualists: even as they prize their own choices and autonomy, they pursue relationships with others and a sense of belonging, according to the report. Young people who said they cared about the happiness of the people around them and took pleasure in working together were more satisfied with their lives.

The researchers put the lesson bluntly in the paper: raising life satisfaction among Gen Z in particular depends on environments built around mutual respect and cooperation, rather than ones that push young people to compare themselves with others and compete without pause, the report said. It is a direct challenge to the grind culture that still dominates so much of school and early-career life.

Millennials tell a similar story about life satisfaction

The comparison group makes the result harder to dismiss as a Gen Z quirk. Among millennials, the same tendency held: people who made their own decisions without fixating on getting ahead of others, and who valued cooperation and bonds with the people around them, reported higher satisfaction. Across both generations, the formula that worked was autonomy plus connection, not dominance.

One surprise: overall life satisfaction was actually higher among Gen Z than among millennials. On a seven-point scale, the younger cohort averaged 4.56 while the older one averaged 4.02, according to the report. Gen Z also scored higher than millennials not only on valuing competition but on valuing belonging and cooperation — suggesting the generation is caught between two strong pulls, and only one of them pays off.

The wider picture in Korea is bleak on life satisfaction

The study arrives in a country that is struggling with this question at the national level. South Korea ranked 33rd among the 38 OECD countries on a three-year average of life satisfaction scores, at 6.04 points — below the OECD average of 6.5, according to the outlet's coverage of a government report on the nation's quality of life. The same official data showed the suicide rate rising for a second consecutive year, underlining why researchers are treating satisfaction as a policy issue rather than a private mood.

South Korean teens themselves seem to sense the stakes. In a Daehaknaeil survey of 800 boys and girls aged 14 to 18 across the country, 52.1 percent named wealth as the key to happiness — far ahead of parents, friends, rest or dreams, as reported by Korea JoongAng Daily. That hunger for money as a happiness strategy sits uneasily next to the new study's finding that comparison-driven striving is exactly what drags satisfaction down.

What this could mean for your own life satisfaction

Most readers will not live under Korea's hyper-competitive school and hiring gauntlet, but the machinery of comparison is universal: class rankings, internship ladders, follower counts, and the highlight reels of everyone your age. The study suggests a practical reframe — check whether your goals are set by you or by the scoreboard. If a target only matters because someone else might beat you to it, it is the kind of goal this research links to lower satisfaction.

It also offers a counterintuitive to-do list. Protecting autonomy — choosing a path because it fits you rather than because it looks impressive — and investing in cooperative relationships with friends and colleagues did more for the respondents' life satisfaction than any competitive edge. For more on habits that genuinely move the needle on mental health, see our report on how extra daily steps tracked with better teen mental health, and browse the mind-body topic page for the latest wellness research.

A few caveats before you quit the race

The honest counterpoint: this data is correlational and self-reported, so it cannot prove that caring about competition makes people unhappy. The arrow could run the other way — people who are already dissatisfied may reach for competition as a way out, or competitive people may simply be ambitious personalities for whom winning genuinely matters. A single survey also cannot tell us whether an intensely competitive person would be happier if they somehow switched values.

The context also limits how far the result travels. The underlying survey is from 2022 and comes from South Korea's famously pressure-cooker education and labor culture, so young people elsewhere may relate to comparison very differently. Still, the core finding is worth sitting with: when the contest becomes the point of your life, satisfaction tends to slip — and the things that lift it are the ones competition often crowds out, like choosing your own direction and keeping the people around you close.