The fear of losing out to others drives competitive over-preparation, so that tuition, queuing and hoarding spread because everyone expects everyone else to do them.
Kiasu is Hokkien for 'afraid to lose', adopted in Singaporean English and turned into a national self-caricature by the Mr Kiasu comics of the 1990s. It works as a coordination problem as much as a trait: if every other family buys tuition, not buying it looks like choosing to fall behind, and Singaporean households spend over a billion dollars a year on private tuition.
In practice
- A school adds an optional Saturday revision class, and within a term attendance is universal and nobody thinks of it as optional.
- Diners take more from a buffet than they can eat because the tray might be empty when they return.
- Standing
- Compare shadow education, the arms race it feeds, and gyoyukyeol.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change