No Contest: The Case Against Competition

by Alfie Kohn

  Presumably related to the idea of “character” are such notions as self-confidence and well-being—as well as self-esteem. Popular magazines often contain articles asserting that competition promotes these things, and such unsubstantiated claims find a ready audience. Other proponents of competition take the more moderate view that while competition may well damage self-esteem, it does not always have this effect. Richard W. Eggerman, a philosopher, offers three such arguments, which will be considered in turn.

  First, he proposes that competition may be harmful only to children, who “may be peculiarly liable to dangers of comparisons of relative worth in a way that adults are not.”40 It is true that much of the research on competition’s psychological and performance-related effects has been conducted with children. However, this probably reflects the accessibility of children as research subjects and the special interest in children on the part of the investigators rather than an assumption that adults do not experience the same effects. Certainly, most theoretical studies of competition, including this one, are also concerned with its consequences for adults. Children may well be “peculiarly liable” to its dangers, as Eggerman suggests, because of their greater malleability. Indeed, a recent panel of sports medicine experts urged that children under the age of eight or ten “should not participate in organized, competitive sports . . . [because] they could impede children’s psychological, sociological and motor skill development.”41 But this does not argue against the unfortunate consequences of competition at any age. The dynamics of self-esteem that make competition detrimental in our youth are not features that we outgrow. And research on the benefits of cooperation is “just as strong for adults as it is for students.”42

  Second, Eggerman contends that competition is damaging only for the insecure or neurotic competitor. The problem, in other words, rests with the individual and not with competition itself. This is the same assumption we encountered in the last chapter with critics who suggest that we can leave competitive games in place so long as players care less about who wins them. It is also similar to an assumption we will consider later—namely, that cheating and violence are aberrant behavior for which the wrongdoer alone, and not competition, per se, should be blamed. Now, clearly, structural competition will not elicit the same degree of intentional competition (and its attendant features) from everyone. But as should also be clear by now, even solid self-esteem does not confer talismanic protection from the effects of losing. Likewise, the vicious circle engendered by the hollowness of winning is not an event to which only neurotics are admitted—although the speed at which the circle turns may be a function of psychological health.

  The hypothesis that the problem lies with (some) competitors and not with competition itself becomes increasingly less plausible each time we see the same essential pattern repeated with different people and in diverse arenas. It is like the psychoanalyst who one day realizes that the similarity of his patients’ problems (e.g., dependency and selfpunishment rituals in women) points to something beyond these individuals, to values woven into the institutional fabric of our society. In this case, we must recognize that the problem rests squarely with the structure of mutually exclusive goal attainment. We need not know anything about the individuals involved to see the destructive potential of a system that says only one of them can be successful. As Morris Rosenberg put it in his book Society and the Adolescent Self-Image, “Whenever a value is set forth which can only be attained by a few, the conditions are ripe for widespread feelings of personal inadequacy.”43

  Eggerman’s last argument is that losing doesn’t have to be experienced as failure. This is true, first, he says, because “only when one could reasonably have expected to win does losing mean failing.”44 He offers the case of someone who runs a major marathon faster than he has ever done before but is nevertheless beaten by a well-known athlete. Surely such a loss will not be construed as failure. This qualification is quite sound—and it has the unintended effect of proving that success and winning are two very different things (see chapter 3). It is true that there are some contests in which people take part without hope of winning. Losing is less likely to represent a crushing blow in cases of low intentional competition (that is, where one is not concerned about being number one). But the relevant question is what proportion of competitive encounters this describes. Most of us enter (or are involved, willy-nilly) in contests where winning is entertained as a distinct possibility—distinct enough so that losing hurts.

  Eggerman goes on to assert that most competitors “usually do entertain fairly realistic impressions of what they are capable” and thus are cushioned from the pain of loss.45 In the absence of hard data, this is a very dubious judgment indeed. But more important, it ignores the structural component of competition—the simple fact that losing means failure in a competitive context. It also ignores the fierce pressure to win and the stigma of losing that attend most contests. Only in extraordinary situations, such as a major marathon, for example, can one opt out of this context and assign another meaning to loss.

  Consider a team of children that has just lost a game. Having been carefully instructed to be “good sports,” they chant: “Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?”—and then name the victorious team. But the chant is perfunctory and the kids are dispirited, resentful, sullen. As adults, we manage to camouflage our feelings more effectively when we congratulate the winner. But this is largely a matter of going through the motions of pretending that losing is not important. However generous our disposition or high our self-esteem, we can scarcely help but feel the brunt of a loss given the nature of competition itself and the powerful forces of a competitive society. Being a “good loser” is a matter of rearranging our face and affecting an attitude. In no way does this posture touch (or reflect) the actual ramifications of loss.

  It is at best an exercise in self-deception to insist to ourselves and our children that losing should not matter. It is obvious to a six-year-old that it matters very much, because she has been told this repeatedly and in various ways. One cartoon has a Little League coach giving a pep talk to a small boy: “Okay, old buddy, get in there and play the game win or lose. But remember, nice guys finish last, there’s no such word as chicken, and every time you lose you die a little.” An article in a magazine for young women contains the boldface heading: “Don’t worry about failure”—even though readers have been instructed just four sentences earlier that “the point of playing games is to learn that the object is to try to win.”46 Stuart Walker reverses himself within a single sentence: “Everyone makes mistakes (‘he who makes the fewest wins’).”47

  These illustrations are unusually blatant, but the same sort of mixed messages are given and received constantly. For every proclamation along the lines of “It’s how you play the game that counts” or “Making the effort is the important thing” or “All these kids out here today are winners,” there are several powerful reminders that no one has the right to celebrate except number one. The simultaneous presence of these two levels of socialization throughout our culture has been observed for many years. “While paying respectful homage to cooperative ideals,” wrote May and Doob in the 1930s, “we go right on with our competitive system.”48 In the 1950s, John R. Seeley’s classic study of suburban life turned up the same phenomenon. In order to succeed, he said, the child “must compete but he must not seem competitive. The school deals with the dilemma by overtly ‘promoting’ cooperation . . . and by covertly ‘tolerating’ competition.”49 In the 1970s, yet another set of social scientists described our “rather schizophrenic condition” whereby “encouragement of cooperative behavior . . . [is] confined to moralistic maxims . . . [while] schools and other institutions in our society focus on developing competitive behaviors.”50

  Apart from the harms of competition, one could argue that this “double-bind”51 represents a disorienting, destructive pattern in itself. The point here, though, is simply this: to argue that competitors cope wel
l with failure is usually to mistake appearance for reality. The appearance of someone untroubled by loss probably reflects the “moralistic maxims” he has been taught. The other, far more substantial message he has absorbed concerns how important winning really is, how much it really does matter. In his panegyric to sports, Michael Novak writes:

  No use saying, “It’s only a game.” It doesn’t feel like a game. The anguish and depression that seize one’s psyche in defeat are far deeper than a mere comparative failure—deeper than recognition of the opponent’s superiority. . . . A game tests, somehow, one’s entire life. It tests one’s standing with fortune and the gods. Defeat is too like death.52

  His florid language aside, Novak is simply describing the psychological destructiveness of losing, the threat to self-esteem. This is a threat that is only papered over with appearances of graceful defeat. It is a threat that is neither mitigated by the “realistic” perceptions of competitors nor magically outgrown when we reach adulthood. It is a threat intrinsic to the win/lose model that is then exacerbated by a culture which brutally dismisses whatever is not number one.

  One final argument in behalf of competition needs to be examined. This is the position that while losing may indeed be construed as failure, this is not really a bad thing. On the contrary, some people tell us, failing keeps us from becoming “too big for our britches” and prepares children for the hard knocks of life. This argument is rarely propounded by psychologists and other serious students of human behavior, but it is widely heard nonetheless and so deserves a response.

  It is surely valuable to learn that one cannot always be successful. One runs into obstacles both internal (a creative block, for instance) and external, and it is appropriate to realize that this is a fact of life. Infantile omnipotence fantasies are best laid to rest. However, some people go much further than this and romanticize failure so as to make it seem more bearable. This tendency represents the same need to convince oneself of the usefulness of pain that was discussed at the beginning of this section. Once this motivation is set aside, it becomes clear that the value of failing is very limited indeed. Most frustrations are psychologically redundant and often positively harmful.

  The position that children, in particular, ought to compete in order to get used to losing is based on a largely discredited assumption of human development—namely, that depriving children is the best way to prepare them for the rude shocks of life. The hypothesis cannot be neatly confirmed or disconfirmed empirically, but its converse is actually far more plausible, not to mention more humane: it is unconditional acceptance in our early years that best allows us to deal with rejection; it is an initial sense of security that helps us to weather the problems we will later face. Again, it may be true that some limited acquaintance with failure is useful. But parents who systematically withhold approval or pleasures from their children or deny them the chance to experience success typically have unconscious reasons for doing so, such as shoring up their own doubtful selfesteem or trying to punish their parents for depriving them. These hidden agendas are then simply rationalized as being in the child’s best interest. The idea that we are best prepared for unpleasant experiences by being exposed to unpleasant experiences at a tender age is about as sensible as the proposition that the best way to help someone survive exposure to carcinogenic substances is to expose him to as many carcinogens as possible in early life.

  Even if we grant a limited usefulness to the experience of failure, furthermore, it is important to emphasize that this experience need not involve losing in competition. One can fall short of one’s own expectations and develop all the appropriate virtues of tenacity and discipline. Competitive loss is a particularly noxious kind of failure, one that contains messages of relative inferiority and that typically exposes one to public judgment and shame. “Let it be granted that men should face mortal risks when they are seasoned to it and be schooled to self-reliance under stern adversity,” writes John Harvey. “It may still be found possible to secure these ends without making men, so much as now, the enemies of their neighbours.”53 To say that failing has its value, then, is not at all to justify competition.

  COMPETITION AND ANXIETY

  Its effect on self-esteem, as serious as it is, does not exhaust the psychological consequences of competition. This section will consider the matter of insecurity and anxiety; the following section will touch on still other effects. Many are closely related to self-esteem, but they merit individual attention nonetheless.

  A number of psychologists have proposed that optimal human functioning presupposes a sense of security about the world—a confidence that it is a safe place and one’s needs will be met. One’s trust in the “world out there” is closely related to one’s trust in oneself: if I cannot depend on what is around me, I will lack the means to accept myself—and I may even come to blame myself for the world as I experience it.

  That the process of competing can threaten our sense of security will be obvious to anyone who has ever competed. One of the reasons competition interferes with productivity, as we saw in chapter 3, is that it can be not only unpleasant but an occasion for severe anxiety. This effect has been noted in several research projects. One study found that pupils performing a motor-steadiness task became more anxious when they had to compete.54 Another experiment, involving undergraduates, discovered that competitively structured discussion sections made students feel “distinctly more tense and anxious than they did in the cooperative sessions.” This anxiety went hand in hand with a “greater incidence of self-oriented needs and . . . [a loss of] selfassurance”—underscoring again the link between security and selfesteem.55 Other investigators, meanwhile, have observed that “athletics can be a continual source of anxiety, even for the most talented players.”56

  We can identify three reasons that competition leaves us insecure and anxious. The first and most obvious is apprehension about losing. Regardless of talent or psychological healthiness, the experience of having to prove oneself by outperforming someone else is invariably unsettling, to say the least. The constant possibility of being defeated simply is not conducive to feeling secure. When we do actually lose, this effect is compounded in subsequent competitive encounters. The process soon takes the form of a self-fulfilling prophecy: the fear of losing makes it more likely that this is just what will happen. Apart from its effect on performance, of course, anxiety is undesirable in its own right. It is one more unhappy legacy of the race to win.

  The second reason for our anxiety concerns feelings of apprehension about winning. Now this seems most paradoxical given that the whole point of competition is to win. But if we think about it, we realize that it is not uncommon for capable competitors to trip themselves up just as it seems they are about to triumph. Consider the case of athletes who “choke” in the final round, a phenomenon that only recently has become the subject of scholarly interest.57 The psychoanalytic tradition helps us to see that this pattern is neither random nor inexplicable. Rather, such people are recoiling from winning in a deliberate (if unconscious) way.

  Why should they do this? Orthodox psychoanalysts believe that the prototype of all competition is the Oedipal contest with the same-sex parent, the prize being the opposite-sex parent. The little boy, Freud tells us, is deeply conflicted about this contest, since he believes punishment (specifically, castration) will result if he is successful. Winning Mommy’s love—then, later, the act of winning itself—is terribly threatening because of this anticipated consequence. Unconsciously, the presumed wrath of the father may turn victory into a prospect as dreadful as defeat.

  Like many others, I find this explanation both fanciful and reductive. As it happens, there are two other possibilities that also make use of unconscious processes but do not require us to assume that an early childhood event neatly accounts for one’s adult behavior. The first is simply that competitors may feel guilty for making other people lose and thus either punish themselves for doing so in the past or take steps to
avoid doing so in the present.

  The second explanation is that competitors may fear that the people they beat will become hostile toward them. Karen Horney has written at length about this reason for fearing victory. “In many neurotics anxiety concerning the hostility of others is so enormous that they are afraid of success, even if they feel certain of attaining it,” she says. While this can be conscious, the neurotic more often is “aware not of his fear but of the resulting inhibitions. When such a person plays tennis, for example, he may feel when he is close to victory that something holds him back and makes it impossible for him to win.”58 What holds him back is the fear that the person he beats will resent him for this and dislike him. The relationship between the two people may suffer and the winner will feel cast off, disconnected, unwanted. Others may admire his victory, but the more substantial kind of approval that is closer to nurturance and love may be withdrawn, and it is the latter kind of acceptance that matters more. The “neurotic person automatically assumes that others will feel just as much hurt and vindictive after a defeat as he does himself,”59 says Horney. He therefore has a strong incentive to avoid winning.

  Horney’s analysis is incisive, marred only by her assumption that it applies exclusively to neurotic people. What she describes is in fact very widespread. Hostility and aggression in competitive situations may perhaps be most pronounced in, but hardly are confined to, neurotics. As the next chapter will argue, aggression is intrinsically connected to competition itself, and the fear that one’s relationship with others will be changed for the worse by competing with them is, in truth, a very reasonable concern. Horney is referring to the neurotic tendency to project one’s own characteristics onto someone else, but in the case of competition, the other person’s hostility may be quite real. To expect the loser to be sore is hardly a symptom of ill health.