What I learned about competitive athletics
Steven B. Zwickel
April 12, 2025
- Winning isn’t everything, but the way a lot of athletes behave it’s pretty damned close.
- When you’re short, pudgy, and wear glasses, nobody will ever ask you to go “shoot hoops”; you will however, be chosen last when teams make up sides.
- Sports-driven parents can drive their children crazy. Dads who were athletes are bitterly disappointed in sons who are not; most don’t bother to hide their dissapointment. Moms can be just as bad.
- Lose often enough and you will start to believe that you are a “loser” in all parts of life.
- Coaches talk a lot about “the mental game” but make a much bigger deal about athletes who are “physical.”
- People who proclaim “no pain, no gain” are either masochistic or enjoy seeing other people suffer.
- Young athletes who are good at sports sometimes feel that they are special and privileged.
- No college coach has ever found a cure for a disease, invented new life-saving technology, or helped end a war, but they are the highest paid people on most university campuses.
- People who are really into competitive athletics value brawn over brain. They disparage and make fun of “eggheads”, intellectuals, and academics. They value machismo, aggressiveness, and so-called manliness.
- Some of those involved in athletics are also extremely competitive in other parts of their lives. <https://business-news.ucdenver.edu/2024/03/01/competition-toxic-or-healthy/>
- If you get hurt playing a sport, people will tell you to “man up”—ignore the pain and “shake it off” no matter how much it hurts or how serious the injury may be.
- Any activity humans do for fun can be ruined by turning it into a competitive sport.
What I wrote about competition in 1994
Competition and competitiveness are so deeply ingrained in modern American culture that we rarely question why we are such a competitive people. This may be considered controversial by some, but scientific research backs up each point that is made. Competitiveness is so much a part of our culture that many people are reluctant to share their negative feelings about it. What you will find is that not all competitive situations are bad, nor are all cooperative ones good.
When economic slumps made businesses reexamine the nature of competition and competitiveness in the workplace, American business organizations increasingly adopted a more collaborative approach.
Another important development has been a change from the “vertical structure” of traditional business organizations to a horizontal structure that emphasizes teamwork and cooperation. Educators, too, are concerned about the effects of a competitive environment on their students. Many have gotten away from grading on a “curve” and now encourage students to work collaboratively in learning and problem solving.
If you were to make a list of what you like about competition you might come up with something like this:
➤ I like the thrill of beating my opponent—winning is exhilarating!➤ I like knowing that I can do something better than anyone else.
➤ Competition keeps me on my toes.
➤ Competition helps resolve disputes over who's the best.
➤ Competition challenges me to grow and become a better person.
There are various approaches to life: you can compete with others, you can cooperate with others, or you can act independently. Look at your list of what you like about competition. Is competition the best way to handle life situations? Might another approach work better in some situations?
Americans are taught to compete at an early age. Competition is part of our cultural heritage; we gravitate toward races and contests that match one individual or team against another. This workshop challenges popular beliefs about the merits of competition. But to challenge such beliefs is to invite strong reactions. You may be told that the reason you don't like competition is “because you are afraid of it.” People may confuse non-competitiveness with issues of personal conflict, poor achievement, or survival.
In fact, our notions of competition are often based on misconceptions about its benefits and usefulness. For example:
➤ Competition is an unavoidable part of human nature—a fact of human life.➤ Competition makes us productive and motivates us to do our best.
➤ Competitive games and sports are good entertainment. The "thrill of victory" satisfies our recreational needs.
None of these four assumptions is supported by scientific research or modern social psychology. They deserve a closer look.
Is Competition Part of Human Nature?
Is competition inevitable in humans? Is it part of human nature or is it something we learn?
One school of thought holds that just about everything we do is a form of competition and that people who don't appear to be competitive have simply found ways to conceal their competitiveness. Other experts, whose position is supported by scientific evidence, contend that cooperation is more natural than competitiveness and argue that society's existence depends on cooperation.
Most of us have learned to view the world as a jungle where "survival of the fittest" and "dog-eat-dog" are rules that we must live by. Competition is much more dramatic and exciting than cooperation and has become the dominant image portrayed by the media. Biologists are raised in a competitive culture and thus tend to perceive competitive behaviors in other species. In addition, natural selection, the term used to describe the evolutionary process, has been misinterpreted to describe a competitive (and imaginary) struggle for survival. To biologists, natural selection is the process by which nature favors species that are able to adapt to their environment better than other species. Nonscientists often confuse natural selection with dominance and aggressive mating behav-iors. Adaptation, however, means fitting into one's ecological niche-being more skillful at gathering food, maintaining a balanced position along the food chain, taking care of one's young, and finding nonfatal ways of resolving conflicts with other members of the same species.
Any example of a successful noncompetitive society or individual should be enough to refute the argument that competition is part of human nature, but people seem to need more evidence to be convinced.
We assume that competition is innate because we are accustomed to it.
However, scientific evidence indicates that people can be cooperative and succeed. Competitiveness is a learned behavior.
How Do We Learn to Be Competitive?
If we are not competitive by nature, how and when do we learn to be competitive? Children receive messages about competition at an early age the importance of being the fastest, the biggest, the strongest, the smartest. Some families teach their children that winning is everything and competition is inevitable. Children from these families may learn to compete for their parents' love. In such families, competition between siblings may even be encouraged.
Competing to win is as American as is apple pie. In American culture, we make sports personalities our heroes and often ignore those who have made significant achievements in the sciences, literature, and the arts.
The competitive and aggressive lawyer and businessperson are admired and emulated.
We also learn about competition in school, where many teachers introduce it as a social norm. Although some educators might protest that they stress cooperation in the classroom, too often teachers define cooperation as compliance and the ability to follow directions. Evidence from studies of other cultures demonstrates that the United States is unique in its attitude toward competition.
Generally speaking, American children are not taught to value cooperation as an alternative to competition, although in the past few decades American educators have begun to consider research studies that show that it is possible to teach children cooperation, that children do retain what they've learned about cooperation, and that later in life they prefer cooperation over competition.
Adults often compare themselves with others to evaluate abilities and success. Children use social comparisons to form their individual identities. Because social comparisons are inevitable, some experts argue that competition is also inevitable. But it's possible to compare oneself with others without deciding who is "better," which is exactly what well-adjusted adults are able to do.
The important issue here is the significance that one attaches to these comparisons. One's degree of competitiveness depends on how frequently and how strongly the person feels a need to see him- or herself as "better" than others. Competition is not an inevitable part of human nature. It is part of a learned value system supported by our culture.
For example:
➤Our legal system follows an adversarial model. Each side presents its case to an impartial judge who enforces the rules of fairness and decides who wins and who loses. In other areas of the world, people often resolve disputes with the help of a mediator-the opposing sides try to work out their own solution through an objective third party.
➤ Sports and games, in which the emphasis is on scoring and winning.
➤ Teachers who grade on a curve, forcing students to compete for a limited number of high grades.
➤ Hiring and promotion.
➤ Admission to schools and colleges.
➤ Bidding on contracts-vendors compete on price, speed, and quality.
➤ Artists' competitions in the fields of dance, music, visual arts, and literature.
➤ Beauty contests.
➤ Political campaigns.
Does Competition Make People More Productive?
Another erroneous popular belief equates competition with productivity. It is argued that competition brings out the best in people. Productivity has been an especially important issue in recent years as economic and political forces have made us focus on the productivity of the American work force. If we don't maintain a high level of productivity, the argument states, we won't be able to compete in world markets.
But we must ask ourselves whether we perform better when we try to beat others, when we work cooperatively with others, or when we work alone.
How does competition measure up against cooperation and individual effort? An analysis of 122 research studies done between 1924 and 1980 found that people almost never work better in a competitive situation. 8 People working in cooperative groups performed better, regardless of whether their group was working independently or competing with other groups.
What Are You Competing For?
People usually expect a reward for winning. Depending on the reward, people are expected to be more or less competitive. However, although researchers have found that "winner take all" reward systems may result in an increase in speed, the quality of performance is diminished.
People perform best in tasks that they enjoy. Thus, extrinsic motivators such as money or points are never as psychologically satisfying as performing a task that is enjoyable and rewarding in itself.
When emphasis is placed on external motivators, internal motivation is weakened and people no longer do things because they enjoy them. Job-burnout victims are workers who have lost sight of the intrinsic rewards of a job well done and thus no longer find their work interesting, challenging, fun, or valuable. Often, they work only for the money.
Why doesn't competition result in superior performance? The answer lies in the fact that trying to beat others is very different from trying to perform well. When you compete with others, you have less energy available to make your product good. In competitive situations, synergy—the energy that comes from having a group of people tackle a problem together—is lacking.
Competitors aren't able to use all of the resources that might be available if they worked cooperatively. Moreover, competition tends to discourage openness and sharing as well as to make people hostile and secretive.
Competition and Anxiety
Competition inhibits productivity because it is stressful and produces anxiety. True, a degree of stress can increase productivity. However, for every task an optimum level of arousal exists the more complex a task is, the lower is its corresponding optimum level of arousal.
Part of the anxiety caused by competition comes from thinking that you may lose. The shame and humiliation of being publicly defeated increase stress and anxiety. Anxiety may also result from winning-the guilt from causing other people to lose, the fear of making enemies, the concern that others will resent you for winning. Finally, competitors often dehumanize their opponents, perceiving them as obstacles to winning. Rather than making people want to win, anxiety makes many people desperate to avoid failure. In such cases, people may go out of their way to avoid competitive situations and feel miserable doing so.
Competitive Recreational Activities
Many adults believe that competitive sports and games are the most appropriate and enjoyable kinds of play. But how do we define play? Is play the same thing as competition or is it different?
➤ Play is voluntary.
➤ Play is fun and pleasing in itself. Although play can help you master a skill or performance, that is not the reason you play.
➤ Play has no goal other than having fun.
➤ Play often involves trying new things, meeting challenges, and overcoming them.
➤ Play is a more or less spontaneous activity. If it includes too many rules, it's not fun.
If we play to relax, then play should be something that reduces stress. Some people find competitive sports very stressful. The degree of stress people feel depends on how seriously they take sports. Americans' attitudes toward sports indicate that we take athletic competitions very seriously; winning is emphasized and often little consideration is given to fun. When athletes feel such pressure to win; the emphasis shifts from the fun of doing something well to the stress of winning at all costs. This attitude takes the fun and playfulness out of competitive sports. In addition, competitive sports often have lots of rules that can inhibit the sense of play, and players are frequently motivated by extrinsic factors such as money, the desire to gain the approval of oth-ers, and prestige and status.
Another problem with competition as recreation is that some people confuse achievement with competition. They insist that keeping score encourages players to do their best. However, many studies indicate that one's goals can be achieved as easily through independent or cooperative activity as they can through competitive activity.
Pros and Cons of Athletic Competition | ||
Exercise: | Playing sports improves a person's strength, endurance, and coordination. | Exercise does not require competition. |
Teamwork: | Being part of an athletic team teaches you interpersonal skills, promotes camaraderie and group loyalty. | Camaraderie is precisely what makes cooperative activities so rewarding. "Fighting" against a common enemy (us vs. them) is not necessary to establish a group feeling. |
Zest: | Competition makes recreational activities exciting and interesting. | Leisure activities that calm, rest, and restore energy can be rewarding and enjoyable. |
Challenge: | Competition allows you to push your personal limits and to excel. | Noncompetitive striving can be very rewarding. Don't confuse achievement with competition. |
Strategy: | Athletic competitions provide a structured environment in which you can anticipate and counter another player's moves. | Overcoming obstacles and solving interesting problems can be fun, but you don't need competition to test your skills. Non-competitive activities can also provide pleasure. |
Total involvement: | Competition may provide an exhilarating experience that transcends day-to-day living. | Competition is not the only type of activity that allows one to feel totally involved and to experience a sense of "existential affirmation." Activities that require creativity, overcoming adversity, and facing new challenges provide similar experiences. |
Thrill of victory: | Triumphing over others is an intrinsically satisfying experience. | Relishing a victory that comes from beating someone else may be a sign of low self-esteem and can harm your interpersonal relationships. |
Of these items, only the last one requires competition. So why do competitive games play such a large role in our culture? The number of adults who actually participate in competitive sports is not really that high. Approximately 80%-90% of children drop out of organized sports by the time they are 15 years old. They drop out for various reasons but many say that they simply don't like competition. Competitive sports also turn off many parents, who become unhappy with schools that emphasize athletics over academics.
Educators who introduce the concept of noncompetitive games to their pupils are witnessing interesting results. When children are offered noncompetitive games, many prefer them over competitive games.
Many people believe that competition is good because it helps build character. Training, psychological and physical preparation, learning new skills, enduring pain and discomfort, working as part of a team, sacrificing oneself for the good of the team are touted as character-building activities of competition.
Critics of competition, however, state that these lessons can also be learned through noncompetitive activities. They say that competition doesn't necessarily build character and point to the negative psychological and interpersonal effects of competition. They argue that one psychological explanation for why people compete is that they need to overcome fundamental doubts about their own abilities and to compensate for low self-esteem.
Some people say that competition teaches important lessons about fairness, playing by the rules, and good sportsmanship. But if fairness must be enforced by squads of referees, umpires, and the hundreds of people who see to it that players, teams, coaches, owners, concession operators, broadcasters, stadium owners, and the rest all play by the rules, we can only conclude that people can't be trusted to play fair on their own. The lesson of sportsmanship is all too often "see what you can get away with." In contrast, character and a solid value system are gained from growing up in an environment in which positive values are nurtured.
Competition in the Workplace
Alfie Kohn distinguishes between structural competition and intentional competition. Structural competition is situational, wherein we are placed in a win/lose situation by circumstances (e.g., when applying for a job). {Kohn, Alfie No Contest: The Case against Competition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986)}
Intentional competition is internal and comes from the individual's need to prove his or her superiority.
American business organizations have traditionally operated within a framework of structural competition-a hierarchical system in which individuals compete for jobs, promotions, and status. New ideas about quality, however, have forced businesses to review the benefits of this approach.
Not surprisingly, many business leaders have replaced "management by results" with the quality leadership philosophies of Juran and Deming, who place greater value on teamwork and cooperation than on competition. Quality leadership stresses collaboration with the organization.
The new organizational philosophies also reject internal competition and the constant need to compare one's achievements with others.
Business organizations are increasingly interested in recruiting team players with strong interpersonal skills. Employees are finding that they must change their attitudes in order to adapt to this new corporate culture.
Today, one even finds a new spirit of cooperation among rival business organizations. Collaboration is no longer perceived as a threat to the survival of laissez-faire capitalism; rather, it is viewed as necessary for its survival.
Cooperation as an Alternative to Competition
It may be difficult to change from a competitive to a cooperative organizational structure, but it is certainly not impossible to do so. When structural competition is replaced by cooperation, it becomes easier to do away with intentional competition and the resultant stress in the workplace.
Competition is not always the best way to achieve one's goals. Collaborative efforts can be just as productive. Working as part of a team requires good communications skills and the ability to coordinate one's plans with others. Teamwork is a source of synergy, whereby collaborative efforts produce more than individual efforts. Moreover, individuals in conflict are more likely to abide by solutions arrived at through a cooperative conflict-resolution process than by decisions handed down by those who must choose a winner and a loser. Students learn more-about their course work and about interpersonal relations-when they work in teams.
Conclusion
We have discussed how competition increases anxiety, drives people apart, and prevents people from doing things in the most productive and efficient way. Competition can also cause people to believe that they are not in control of what happens to them; because they don't make the rules, their successes and failures are attributable to others, which helps create a sense of helplessness, frustration, and anger.
Because competition is the accepted norm in our society, when we compete we feel "normal." By doing what is expected of us, we feel better about ourselves. As a result, many people have mixed feelings about competing, winning, and losing.
Studies have shown that self-esteem rises in a cooperative environment. In a competitive environment, one person or team wins and the others lose. Losing can be humiliating and can make people feel inadequate.
Losing doesn't add to self-esteem; at best, it may not harm your self-image. And winning can't compensate for losing, because victory is never permanent. A winner immediately becomes the target of his or her rivals.
Competition breeds more competition
People who are highly competitive sometimes have trouble understanding the concepts presented here. They have always competed and can't see why it is a problem. It may be very difficult for them to accept the fact that many people are turned off by competition. Similarly, those who consistently avoid competition may need to learn to appreciate some people's need to compete. The goal of this article is to create a dialogue between these two points of view.
Here are some more ideas to consider:
➤ Losing isn't equivalent to personal failure.• Why do some people take winning so seriously?
• Why do we get such mixed messages about winning and losing: for example, "losing doesn't matter," but "nice guys finish last."
➤ It's important for society to have rules, and competition is one of the best ways to teach children to follow the rules.
• What happens when no penalties are incurred for breaking the rules? What happens when the rules are not enforced, enforced sporadically, or used to discriminate?
• Do too many rules merely encourage people to try to find ways to get around them?
➤ Our legal system is adversarial. Each side presents its case to an impartial judge who enforces the rules of fairness and decides who wins and who loses. In other countries, disputes may be resolved with the help of a mediator or ombudsman.
• Does competition lead to rigid, either/or thinking and cause people to frame problems in terms of good vs. evil, them vs. us? Is an adversarial procedure the best system for handling family disputes, divorces, and custody battles?
• What would happen if the judge didn't have to pick a winner and a loser but could rule that both sides deserved to win a little? Is there any advantage to having the different sides try to work out their own solution?
➤ Americans have been accused of being greedy and materialistic. We are always trying to buy more, own more, experience more.
• Does competition foster the notion that owning things is the most important symbol of success?
➤ Some people say that so many rules govern manufacturing, employment, marketing, and tax laws that we don't really have a competitive marketplace.
➤ Competition can only work if everyone agrees on the rules and goes after the same goals. Is conformity one result of competition?
➤ Competition is not always the best way to achieve one's goals.
• In some situations might approaches other than competition be more appropriate?
- Courses for which the teacher grades on the curve
- Hiring the best person for a job Being considered for a promotion
- When selling something
- In court, on either side of a lawsuit Sports and games
- Artistic competitions (dance, music, visual arts, poetry, or literature)
- Beauty contests
- When supporting a political candidate (or running for office yourself)
• How do the American and Asian perspectives differ?
• Should our actions, behaviors, and organizational goals reflect greater concern for the welfare of the group?
