No Contest (49 page)

11. Michener,
Sports in America,
p. 427.

12. Combs,
Myths in Education,
p. 167.

13. A detailed and trenchant analysis of crime, which decisively refutes the assumption that incarceration solves the problem, can be found in Elliott Currie's recent book,
Confronting Crime
.

14. Strick, pp. 57,97,117. Similarly, Jane Mansbridge observed: “It was not just paranoia that made former President Nixon compile an ‘enemies list'; it was the spirit of adversary democracy”
(Beyond Adversary Democracy,
p. 301).

15. Luschen, “Cheating in Sport,” p. 71.

16. Orwell, “Sporting Spirit,” p. 153.

17. Bredemeier and Shields, p. 85.

18. Johnson and Johnson, “Processes,” p. 87.

19. Novak, pp. 311–18.

20. Russell,
Conquest of Happiness,
pp. 53–54.

21. “Any individual who has been around football for any period of time knows that ‘elbows fly' on the first play from scrimmage. This is when each man tells his opponent ‘who is boss.' Yet let a player get ‘caught' for punching and everyone exhibits great shock. . . . _Overtly we give the impression that the morality of sport is identical to the morality of the choir. It seems it is high time we either change the nature of sport (which is highly unlikely), or stop the hypocrisy and
admit
to ourselves the existing ethic. To condone, covertly, and punish, overtly, is not my idea of authenticity” (Slusher, p. 167).

22. This finding emerged from studies with three different populations, ranging in age from elementary school to college, and with two different tests of moral development. See Bredemeier and Shields, p. 29.

23. Sissela Bok,
Lying,
p. 258.

24. Tutko and Bruns, p. 84. Recall Stuart Walker's equation of generosity during a competitive encounter with “surrendering” (see p. 124).

25. Amitai Etzioni, “After Watergate—What?” p. 7.

26. Frankel, “Search for Truth,” p. 1051.

 

CHAPTER
8

 

1. Ames, p. 353.

2. Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin,
The Psychology of Sex Differences,
p. 249.

3. Andrew Ahlgren and David W. Johnson, “Sex Differences in Cooperative and Competitive Attitudes from the Second Through the Twelfth Grades.”

4. For example, a series of studies using the Work and Family Orientation Questionnaire developed by Robert Helmreich and Janet Spence has found that men score significantly higher than women on the competitiveness scale (see Spence and Helmreich, “Achievement-related,” P. 45).

5. Bruce Mays, “In Fighting Trim,” p. 28.

6. Robert W. Stock, “Daring to Greatness,” p. 142.

7. The reflections of Mark Fasteau are summarized by Jack W. Sattel in “Men, Inexpressiveness, and Power,” p. 122.

8. Matina Horner's unpublished doctoral dissertation from 1968 is en-titled “Sex Differences in Achievement Motivation and Performance in Competitive and Noncompetitive Situations.” She later summarized her work in several places. See, for example, her chapter “The Measurement and Behavioral Implications of Fear of Success in Women.”

9. Miron Zuckerman and Ladd Wheeler, “To Dispel Fantasies About the Fantasy-based Measure of Fear of Success,” p. 943.

10. Zuckerman and Wheeler (1975) conclude that “Horner's suggestion that success avoidance is more frequent among females than among males has not been supported” (ibid., p. 935). David Tresemer's metaanalysis of more than 100 studies (1976) led to the same finding (“The Cumulative Record of Research on ‘Fear of Success'”). A recent Japanese study (1982) again turned up no significant sex difference (Hirotsugu Yamauchi, “Sex Differences in Motive to Avoid Success on Competitive or Cooperative Action”).

11. “The fantasy material elicited from women by the story-telling technique has relatively little relationship to a gender-differentiating personality characteristic but instead largely reflects the respondents' perceptions of society's current sex-role attitudes and their expectations about the consequences of role conformity or violation under the particular circumstances described in the verbal cue. With greater societal acceptance of women's educational and vocational aspirations, sex differences in fear-of-success studies appear to be evaporating” (Spence and Helmreich, “Achievement-related,” p. 37).

12. Horner, “Femininity and Successful Achievement,” p. 54.

13. The study, by Miron Zuckerman and S. N. Alison, is cited by Georgia Sassen in “Success Anxiety in Women: A Constructivist Interpretation of Its Source and Its Significance,” p. 16.

14. Sassen, ibid.

15. Sassen, “Sex Role Orientation, Sex Differences and Concept of Success,” pp. 56–57.

16. Horner, “Femininity and Successful Achievement,” p. 67.

17. Maccoby and Jacklin,
Psychology of Sex Differences,
p. 351.

18. Horner, “Femininity and Successful Achievement,” p. 61.

19. Sassen, “Success Anxiety in Women," p. 15.

20. Sherberg, “Thrill of Competition.”

21. Psychiatrist Carlotta Miles is quoted by Judy Bachrach in “Rivalry in the Sisterhood,” p. 58.

22. Susan Brownmiller describes such traditional kinds of competition among women in her book
Femininity
.

23. Jane Gross, “Against the Odds: A Woman's Ascent on Wall Street,” p. 18.

24. Ibid., p. 21. “I'm not in this to be a nice guy; I'm too profit-oriented,” Valenstein adds (p. 68).

25. Sandra Salmans, “Women Dressing to Succeed Think Twice About the Suit,” p. A1.

26. Anne Taylor Fleming, “Women and the Spoils of Success,” p. 30.

27. Anita Diamant, “The Women's Sports Revolution,” pp. 21, 20.

28. In
The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender,
Nancy Chodorow offers a persuasive account of how women come to incline toward relationship. Her theory, which concerns early-life experiences and specifically addresses the question of which parent bears the responsibility for caring for infants, has influenced Carol Gilligan and Georgia Sassen, among others.

29. Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice,
p. 26.

30. Ibid., p. 19.

31. Derber, chapter 2.

32. Don Zimmerman and Candace West, “Sex Roles, Interruptions, and Silences in Conversation.”

33. Pamela Fishman, “Interaction: The Work Women Do.”

34. Ibid., p. 405.

35. Robin Lakoff, personal communication, 1984.

36. Barrie Thorne, personal communication, 1984.

37. Sassen, “Success Anxiety in Women,” pp. 21–22. Gilligan similarly writes that “the observation that women's embeddedness in lives of relationship, their orientation to interdependence, their subordination of achievement to care, and their conflicts over competitive success leave them personally at risk in mid-life seems more a commentary on the society than a problem in women's development” (pp. 170–71).

 

CHAPTER
9

 

1. Deutsch,
Distributive Justice,
p. 196.

2. Wachtel, p. 144.

3. Ibid., p. 174.

4. Philip G. Zimbardo et al., “The Psychology of Imprisonment: Privation, Power, and Pathology.” The quotations are taken from pp. 282–85. Zimbardo cites a similar study, conducted by N. J. Orlando, in which personnel from a psychiatric hospital who agreed to play the role of mental patients for a weekend soon displayed the behaviors found among such patients: fighting, pacing, uncontrollable weeping, and so on (p. 284).

5. Harvey et al., pp. 23, 95.

6. Sadler, p. 168.

7. Deutsch,
Distributive Justice,
p. 154.

8. Shirk,
Competitive Comrades,
esp. pp. 161–62.

9. Boston, which by some measures is the most dangerous U.S. city in which to drive, offers a good case study. See my article “Stop!” for an analysis of these issues.

10. Orlick,
Winning Through Cooperation,
pp. 155–56.

11. Paul E. Breer and Edwin C. Locke,
Task Experience as a Source of Attitudes,
p. 271.

12. Axelrod, chapter 4. The quotations are from p. 85.

13. The style of presentation in this section was suggested by Jay Haley's essay, “The Art of Being a Failure as a Therapist.”

14. For a very provocative essay on the implicit conservatism of humanistic psychology, see chapter 3 of Russell Jacoby's
Social Amnesia
. “One helps oneself because collective help is inadmissible; in rejecting the realm of social and political praxis, individual helplessness is redoubled and soothes itself through self-help, hobbies, and how-to manuals. . . . The reality of violence and destruction, of psychically and physically damaged people, is not merely glossed over, but buried beneath the lingo of self, meaning, authenticity, personality” (pp. 51, 57). Jacoby is much less persuasive when he extends his indictment to take in the neo-Freudians and, for that matter, every variety of psychology except for orthodox psychoanalysis.

15. On the subject of realists and Utopians, the philosopher Hazel Barnes has written, “We should not be afraid of the Utopian in our thinking, for it is only belief in the possibility of what has not yet been attained which makes progress even conceivable. A willingness to rethink all of our aims and to throw the whole system into question will prevent our painting the walls when we ought to be getting rid of the termites and strengthening the foundations”
(An Existentialist Ethics,
p. 306). C. Wright Mills addressed the same issue: “What
is
‘practical' and what
is
‘utopian'? Does not utopian mean merely: whatever acknowledges other values as relevant and possibly even as sovereign? But in truth, are not those who in the name of realism act like crackpots, are they not the Utopians? Are we not now in a situation in which the only practical, realistic down-to-earth thinking and acting is just what these crackpot realists call ‘utopian'?” (
Power, Politics, and People,
p. 402). Erich Fromm, Jonathan Schell, and Paul Wachtel have all expressed similar sentiments.

16. Fred M. Hechinger, “Experts Call a Child's Play Too Serious to Be Left to Adults,” p. C4.

17. In his account of how we compete in conversation, Charles Derber remarks that “the allocation of attention inevitably mirrors the basic structure of the society in which it evolves; it can thus assume a new form only if fundamental social change occurs. . . . Where norms of self-interest govern economic behavior, face-to-face social behavior is invariably egoistic and competitive” (p. 88). Paul Hoch similarly observes that sports mirror the larger society (p. 10), while Robert Paul Wolff argues that “only a social revolution of the most far-reaching sort” will allow schooling to be noncompetitive
(The Ideal of the University,
p. 68).

18. Orlick,
Winning Through Cooperation,
p. 138.

19. Wolff, especially pp. 143, 149.

20. Benjamin Barber,
Strong Democracy
. Also see Jane J. Mansbridge's discussion of these issues in
Beyond Adversary Democracy
.

21. Deutsch,
Distributive Justice,
p. 281.

22. Lawrence K. Frank, p. 322.

23. Edgar Z. Friedenberg,
R. D. Laing,
p. 96.

 

CHAPTER
10

 

1. For a cogent discussion of how competitive classroom games are both unnecessary and destructive—followed by suggestions for the kinds of games that might replace them—see Mara Sapon-Shevin, “Cooperative Instructional Games: Alternatives to the Spelling Bee.” One of Sapon-Shevin's major points is that the anger and hurt feelings that so often attend these games do not reflect failings of the individual children but follow from the competitive structure of the games themselves.

2. Spencer Kagan quoted in Ron Brandt, “On Cooperative Learning: A Conversation with Spencer Kagan," p. 8. Elsewhere, Kagan has observed that teachers who make public the achievement of their students set up the conditions for competition even if that is not their intent. This would include posting either tests and papers that have been graded or charts with names and scores (Kagan et al., “Classroom Structural Bias,” p. 279). We might add to this list the repugnant practice of announcing each student's score on a test or paper as it is handed back.

3. The third edition of that book,
Learning Together and Alone,
was published in 1991.

4. Lilya Wagner,
Peer Teaching: Historical Perspectives
. Also see Shlomo Sharan, “The Group Investigation Approach to Cooperative Learning,” p. 30.

5. For a discussion of the difference between cooperation and altruism, see my article “Cooperation: What It Means and Doesn't Mean.”

6. Shlomo Sharan, however, has argued forcefully that “whole-class instruction should be retired as the primary mode of teaching, and, at best, should occupy a fraction of the time it presently occupies in the instructional repertoire of teachers.” Eschewing the qualifiers that typically mute the impact of recommendations offered in academic essays, Sharan declares that whole-class teaching “often generates . . . social distance between peers in the classroom and between those from different ethnic groups in particular, insidious social comparison processes, more tightly knit cliques in classrooms, and many more students at the lower levels of achievement. . . . The fact is that cooperative learning can be implemented only to the extent that traditional whole-class teaching is supplanted, not just altered!” (“Cooperative Learning,” p. 298).

7. Robert Slavin,
Cooperative Learning,
p. 44.

8. David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson,
Cooperation and Competition,
p. 158. These numbers reflect measures of overall self-esteem. Of the studies that found a difference on measures of task or academic selfesteem in particular, twenty-three favored cooperation and one favored competition. Of the studies that compared cooperative and
individualistic
arrangements on overall self-esteem, thirty-nine found an advantage for the former and three for the latter.