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skilled performance brings control to a situation most people would regard as uncontrollable.
The feeling of self-determination they get from conquering the risks is the real payoff. It’s not pure thrill they seek, but the ability to control the environment within a thrilling context.
We need to make a distinction between adaptive competitiveness and maladaptive competitiveness. Adaptive competitiveness is characterized by perseverance and determination to rise to the challenge, but it’s bounded by an abiding respect for the rules. It’s the ability to feel genuine satisfaction at having put in a worthy effort, even if you lose. People with adaptive competitiveness don’t have to be the best at everything—they only strive to be the best in the domain they train for.
Healthy competitiveness is marked by constant striving for excellence, but not desperate concerns over rank.
Maladaptive competitiveness is characterized by psychological insecurity and displaced urges. It’s the individual who can’t accept that losing is part of competing; it’s the person who competes when others around him are not competing.
In the Homeric Age, to describe someone as having aretas was to say that he had competitive fire.
aretas—attaining excellence through competition—became the supreme Grecian virtue.
Competition spurs motivation, one way or another—whether it’s because a competitor wants to win or because a competitor simply doesn’t want to come out on the bottom.
I would argue only when one WANTs/CHOOSES to compete. Some may just quit for fear of finishing last.
Even when we are dragged into competitions we’d rather not be in, the fact we are being compared to others triggers our competitive instinct and we try harder.
Disagree with this one - watch forced competition in a PE class - many try even less.
A study of distance runners, for instance, reveals that those who compete at the national level (for money, medals, and glory) have the greatest intrinsic motivation. It’s only the intermediate runners who are externally focused.
Competition doesn’t kill creativity: it facilitates creative output by supplying motivational drive.
Success in competition requires taking risks that are normally held back by fear. The first risk is entering the competition itself—choosing to compete. Everyone has his own personal threshold where the benefits of competing outweigh the fears. Those who focus on what they’ll win choose to compete far more. Those who focus on their odds of winning choose to compete far less.
the mental states, behaviors, and intensity of top competitors would be socially taboo if not for the competition.
one could argue that it’s only during competitions that we are socially permitted to try our absolute hardest, uncloak our desire to win, and be at our most intense.
In just about every study of competition effects on a normal population, the majority improve their effort level in competitive circumstances, while some are immune and some reduce their effort.
The real benefit of competition is not winning—it is improved performance.
to keep the competitive fire lit bright, nothing is more important than that the contest be close.
Having friends whose SAT scores were 100 points higher than yours led to a half-grade improvement in GPA.
Collab or comp?
Competition works when it pushes everyone to new heights. But in this case, the very subjects meant to be helped by competition were retreating from it.
The rule of thumb in sales research is that contests only work when it’s an even matchup, or a close race, such that the extra effort becomes the decider between winning and losing. People need at least a fighting chance.
For most of us, competitive fire is hugely impacted by what we feel our odds of success are. It’s a big difference if you’re competing against ten people or competing against 100. When the field is too large, and the chance to be near the top is slim, people don’t try as hard.
the “N-Effect.” The larger the N—the number of participants involved in a task—the worse the outcome for the individuals who are participating.
Once the crowd is large enough that we don’t feel the element of personal competition, the result doesn’t feel like a personal statement of our worth, so we don’t try as hard.
Rivalries seem to create reliable upsets.
Matthew Effect was coined by sociologist Robert Merton in 1968; it refers to the dynamic that the early leaders in a competition tend to get showered with resources that make them even better,
quote from the Gospel According to Matthew: “For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
Researchers are still working out the neuroscience of the home advantage—but so far the data suggest that home victories light up the brain’s reward center in a different, more pronounced way. Thus winning at home is more thrilling to pursue and more fulfilling once achieved.
If they were learning the skill, the presence of spectators hampered performance. If they had mastered it, the presence of spectators improved performance.
Zajonc wrote, “performance is facilitated and learning is impaired by the presence of spectators.”
The idea that novices and experts respond to an audience divergently is consistent with other work that shows that novices get the most out of positive feedback, but experts benefit from criticism—they need that discerning scrutiny in order to improve.
Jack Aiello of Rutgers University has shown that simple tasks improve under supervision. But the more complicated the job, the worse people perform when being monitored.
How does this impact supervision for learning?
For the sophisticated kinds of work our economy increasingly relies on—complex and creative work that takes more brainpower than muscle power—do employees need to be monitored at all?
Can you just hire people who are driven and motivated, and turn them free?
The short answer is that Aiello and his team have found that intermittent supervision works even better than continuous supervision.
introverts work most productively without supervision;
So the question: does the extra money motivate better performance... Or riskier performance?
The downfall of financial rewards is well known—they sometimes displace or destroy intrinsic motivation.
The sense of unfairness that stems from unequal pay can often be detrimental among coworkers. And financial rewards become a treadmill you can’t escape—if you stop paying people, they stop trying as hard.
highly talented, ambitious people have a strong attraction to incentive-laden, financially rewarding workplaces, schools, and teams.
A workplace can be egalitarian and noncompetitive, but it will repel the stars, who fear they won’t get the recognition and compensation for their superior value.
The question posed earlier was if can you just hire driven, motivated people, and turn them loose, without supervision or bonus pay to prod them. Sure, if you can find those people and hold on to them. If you can’t, usually you have to sweeten the pot.
Those with fast-acting dopamine clearers are the Warriors, ready for threatening environments where maximum performance is required despite threat and pain. Those with slow-acting dopamine clearers are the Worriers, capable of more complex planning and thinking ahead about likelihoods and consequences.
For those with the “Warrior” gene, a majority had recovered from their PTSD.
For those with the “Worrier” gene, it was a different story. It had taken only a single traumatic event to cause severe PTSD symptoms.
Worriers can handle stress, and even outperform the Warriors, if they train themselves to handle the specific stress of certain recurring situations. By acclimating to their stressful environment over a long period of time, they learn to perform.
Stress helped the men and hurt the women.
Under stress, men’s brains tune out emotional cues. Women under stress seek out the emotional cues.
“They didn’t need the force of my personality,” he said. “They needed my humanity. Above all, they wanted me to care about them as people.”
On coaching girls... Competitive on the field, relationships off the field.
ambitious male state legislators will run for Congress if they have any chance to win. Ambitious female legislators will run for Congress if they have a good chance to win.
It was no longer sufficient to claim that women were inherently less competitive just because they competed in fewer contests. Instead, it was necessary to evaluate the more strategic aspects of tournament entry—how the potential costs and benefits compare to the likelihood of success.
