Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing

by Po Bronson

Women do seem to compete less—because they only compete when they know they have a decent chance to win.

When women are confident they have a chance, they will compete. As much or more than men. They just refuse to waste time with losing.

It’s not that women are naturally risk-averse. They perceive risk quite accurately. It’s not that women are afraid of the competition itself, or don’t enjoy the competition—it’s that they’re better at recognizing when they will probably lose.

Jackson noted that, for boys who went to the most elite schools, their math scores suffered. They would have learned more math if they had gone to a slightly easier school. When Jackson looked at single-sex schools, the trend was even stronger.

the best-achieving woman served as a “shining light” for her roommates. Over time, she pulled up the grades of her fellow roommates.

Rather than being inspired by their high-achieving dormmate, “Men seem to be depressed by their strongest peer.”

girls who won the lottery and attended their first-choice charter school increased their odds of going to a four-year college. But boys who lost the lottery (and didn’t go to the charter school of their dreams) had better odds of attending a four-year college than boys who won the lottery.

“Being a small fish in a big pond is particularly bad for boys,” Jackson added.

“If you have a son, you should put them in the school with the brightest teachers, but you should be wary of putting him in a hypercompetitive environment.”

an example of how the psyche gets worn down when you overcompete—when people compete too much, always interpreting their world through the lens of winners and losers.

Most competitions are held over a defined period of time—the 60 minutes of football. When the contest is over, competitors can relax, leave it behind, and separate themselves from how well they did in the game. In elite schools, this isn’t the case. The competition for good grades is endless; the comparisons never cease. It’s not just a game—it’s their life, with real outcomes. Competition is not just about winning; sometimes it’s about surviving. To lose in a game is something men can rebound from. But to be losing in life, day in and day out, gets to them. They can’t escape it.

finite games have a beginning, an end, and the goal of winning.

Infinite games, by definition, can never end, and, since no winner is ever declared, the goal in...

It’s in these infinite games, the evidence suggests, that women survive better than men. By not always caring about winning and losing, they thrive. Their competitive style is more successful.

Researchers have found that the more people focus on their odds of winning, the less likely they’ll go for it. But the more they focus on what they’ll win if they succeed, the more likely they’ll go for it.

six-year-old boys spent 74% of their time in a coordinated group activity; girls played in a group only 16% of the time. Girls played more in dyads, and their dyadic interactions lasted twice as long as the boys’ pairings.

While groups embrace individual differences, in pair-based relationships, the emphasis is on finding commonalities and suppressing differences. Friends must be equals.

The inherent design of dyads discourages competition. To be willing to compete is to be willing to jeopardize a dyad.

According to Benenson, women aren’t merrier in a larger group. They don’t see the additional people as assets, but threats to the intimacy of the dyad.

Laterborns get used to standing up to someone who is bigger, knows more, and wants to crush them. When they get into a real competition, outside the family, they’re less intimidated—it’s less of a shock. They’re psychologically familiar with the circumstance. It’s not the first time they’ve had to work their butt off or endure being the weaker contestant.

Paquette explains that this kind of play, where the parent can escalate or reduce the aggressiveness, teaches children how to express their aggression but in a modulated and controlled way. Doing so within the context of an emotional bond keeps these displays of aggression safe, yet it also destabilizes children, pushing them and expanding their comfort zone. Kids learn to encode and decode signals that regulate aggressive play.

Paquette’s argument is that this emotional groundwork helps children later in life be brave in unfamiliar situations, stand up for themselves, and learn to take risks. It gives them training time to get comfortable with the emotional intensity of competition.

We can build up children’s competitive fire through group play, roughhousing within limits, and teaching them never to quit. And it seems that if we push these buttons correctly, those kids will grow up into strong competitors as adults.

The sex of a person turns out to be a distraction—mere noise. Finger-length tells you far more than gender does. Brain differences, combined with psychological differences, interact to forge the rare kind of risk ignorer who is competitive enough to succeed.

if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” —Theodore Roosevelt

when people focus on the upside, they take risks that can defy the odds. When they focus on the odds, they tend not to take risks.

The hallmark characteristics of playing to win are an intensification of effort and continuous risk taking. The equivalent for playing not to lose is conservatism and trying to avoid costly mistakes.

Under intense pressure, though, having a strategy of avoiding mistakes leads, by itself, to more mistakes. This is the paradox of playing not to lose.

Both men and women are hoping to end up holding the trophy, but their orientation leads them to play different styles. One is trying to get the trophy; the other is trying to not lose it.

But Playing to Win and Playing Not to Lose are more than just descriptive metaphors. They are diametrically opposing strategies, triggered by different psychological and physiological mechanisms. And they have real consequences—especially during competition.

The brain does indeed have separate systems, electrically and chemically distinct. One neural system is waiting for something to get excited about, at which point it cranks up and drives you to action. The other system is monitoring everything you do like a hovering parent. It’s ready to jump in and stop you from taking a risk or making a careless mistake.

we are either “gain-oriented” or “prevention-oriented.”

The closer you get to the end—as the goal looms larger—the stronger the tendency to shift into prevention-orientation.

In a threat situation, the expectations are very high. You know you’re being judged, and you feel you can’t make a single mistake. Despite the intensity of the competition, the fear of mistakes invokes that prevention-orientation: you’re trying to prevent catastrophe rather than initiate a success. Competitors feel more anxious, less energetic, and avoidant.

a challenge state, you’re not expected to be perfect, and not expected to win, but you have a fighting chance to rise to the occasion. You’re free to take risks and go for it, which activates the gain-orientation system.

in many situations, changing the framing of a task from threat to challenge is all it may take for success.

it’s much easier to learn from mistakes—without dwelling on them—outside of a competitive context. Once the stakes are increased, the drop in voltage can become much more pronounced.

When you’re gain-oriented, you brush off details. You are confident that you will succeed. Getting more information would only make you guarded and unwilling to take risks. You’re eager and work fast, and you excel under time pressure. You perceive the competition as arousing and animating, and ultimately a thrill. You respond to (and learn most from) praise and feedback that highlights what you’ve done well.

When you’re prevention-oriented, you absorb all the details, since focusing on details cuts down mistakes. You like to resolve ambiguities before moving on: it helps to have as much information as possible about the opponent. You are often underconfident. You’re vigilant and work meticulously, avoiding risks. You work best without time pressure. You perceive the competition inherently as a threat and, ultimately, a great stress. You learn the most from feedback on your mistakes.

more productive when their reward pay is structured in the negative: “I’m going to pay you this entire bonus, but I’ll deduct a certain amount if you don’t get at least 95% done.”

By definition, new ideas can’t come from a playing-not-to-lose mindset, where the inhibition system is hyperactive. Creativity requires disinhibition: it requires turning off the internal censors in order to allow brainstorming and idea generation.

When they first arrived on campus as freshmen, they wanted to get an education that would last them a lifetime. But by the end of the semester, they were fixated on learning just what they would need to get through final exams.

Competitive fire will never ignite, or be expressed, when our orientation is just to get through the day. Competitive fire will flourish when long-term goals are high, and when it’s accepted that risks and mistakes go hand-in-hand, and we are free to let ambition reign.

in unequal contests, it’s valuable to strategically remind yourself of the role of luck—and even to embrace it.

Hanin postulated that everyone has an Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning (IZOF), a level of anxiousness beneficial to his performance. But some players need more anxiety to be at their best, while others need much less.

The important thing to recognize is there’s a difference between experiencing a stressful situation and being in distress.

The real distinction between amateur competitors and professionals is how they interpret anxiety.

amateurs view anxiety as detrimental, while the professionals tend to view it as beneficial.

The goal, then, is not necessarily to calm competitors to the point of being relaxed. Rather, it’s to help them get into their optimal zone,

the mental states needed to compete are not always socially palatable.