No Contest (21 page)

The last of these beliefs is the most remarkable. Empirical claims about inevitability or performance are relatively distant from ourselves, and an argument about them can be carried on in a wholly intellectual fashion. But the contention that competition is psychologically beneficial contradicts the intuitive knowledge that I believe most of us possess. Despite direct awareness of what competition does to people (to say nothing of the kind of analysis offered here), some individuals persist in claiming that its effects are constructive. This is a powerful example of how it is possible to adjust our beliefs so as to escape the threatening realization that we have been subjecting ourselves to something terrible, that we have internalized a corrosive personality attribute.

Also, this may be why “the traditional assumption that competitive sport builds character is still with us today in spite of overwhelming contrary evidence.”
³⁶
Apart from the absence of data to support it, the adage itself is exceedingly slippery. One sports sociologist reports that of all the writers he has encountered who repeat this assertion, not a single one actually defined the word
character,
let alone provided evidence for the claim.
Character
was “typically assumed to be understood as desirable and wholesome, or it was defined implicitly by association with such adjectives as ‘clean-cut,' ‘red-blooded,' ‘upstanding,' ‘desirable,' and so forth.”
³⁷
For Douglas MacArthur, competition is a “vital character builder” in the sense that it “make[s] . . . sons into men.”
³⁸
This definition, besides being irrelevant to half the human race, tells us nothing about which features of being a man are considered desirable.

In what may be the only explicit research of this claim, Ogilvie and Tutko could find “no empirical support for the tradition that sport builds character. Indeed, there is evidence that athletic competition limits growth in some areas.” Among the problematic results they discovered were depression, extreme stress, and relatively shallow relationships. Ogilvie and Tutko also found, as mentioned before, that many players “with immense character strengths” avoid competitive sports. Finally, they discovered that those who do participate are not improved by competition; whatever strengths they have were theirs to begin with.
³⁹

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 well 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.