Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both (4 page)

Figure skating has always been a majestic sport filled with artistry and pageantry. Sure, it is competitive too, but the competition has always been dignified. That all changed on January 6, 1994, as the U.S. Olympic figure skating team prepared to select its two female representatives for the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, the two leading contenders, were fierce competitors and rivals.

Everyone following U.S. skating knew that the competition between Nancy and Tonya would be intense, but nobody was prepared for what happened after practice on that January afternoon. An assailant wielding a metal baton attacked Nancy, striking her right knee. Even more shocking was the news that the assault had been orchestrated by Nancy's rival, Tonya.

What could have driven Tonya to such a drastic action? Reports from the media circus that followed offer some insight. For one, Tonya had always felt that Nancy was treated with greater respect than she was. Although neither was from a wealthy family, Tonya appeared less graceful in her demeanor, dress, and style than Nancy. One skating expert called Tonya “an ugly duckling with frizzy hair from the wrong side of the tracks.” Tonya herself referred to Nancy saying, “She's a princess. I'm a piece of crap.”

Moreover, while Tonya and Nancy were fierce rivals, they were, in many ways, similar. Each could point to one major professional achievement: Nancy had already won an Olympic medal and Tonya was the only American woman to ever land a triple axel in a competition. And in 1994, both had excellent chances of making the U.S. Olympic team. Yet Tonya felt inferior to Nancy, and as we have seen, feeling inferior to a rival can be a powerful motivator. It certainly was in this case. Tonya poured herself into skating and practiced long hours. But she still felt that her path to success was blocked—by Nancy. She feared that simply practicing harder would not be enough. And so, Tonya orchestrated “the whack heard round the world.”

Our own research conducted with NYU professor Gavin Kilduff confirms that feelings of rivalry, if left unchecked, can lead to violent behavior. For example, in one study, an analysis of 2,788 soccer matches played between 2002 and 2009 in Serie A, Italy's top league, we found that when teams located in the same city played each other, the games were rougher and players received more yellow and red cards for unsportsmanlike and unethical behavior.

Athletes aren't the only ones who fall prey to the pressure of social comparison. Even corporations resort to dirty tricks as they struggle to best their rivals. Take, for example, what happened as the airline Virgin Atlantic began to take market share from British Airways: British Airways responded by calling Virgin's customers and informing them that their flights had been canceled (even though they had not been canceled). The competition became so nasty that British Airways even circulated false rumors that Virgin's CEO Richard Branson was HIV positive.

Social comparison pressure even fuels cheating within the ivory tower of academia. A clever study led by Ben Edelman of Harvard University investigated cheating behavior within the Social Science Research Network (SSRN): a website that allows faculty to post their research and broadcast their findings well before they appear in print. One feature of the site displays the number of times an article has been downloaded. This number conveys a sense of how interesting and anticipated an article is; frequently downloaded articles are given special distinction, and some universities even use SSRN download counts as a measure of research quality.

But here is the problem. Download counts are easy to manipulate. Faculty can download their own articles—or even write computer programs to do this—which impacts their relative ranking. When Ben analyzed suspicious downloads (e.g., rapid downloads that occurred across fixed-time intervals), he found some obvious relationships. For example, professors hoping to get tenure at prestigious institutions are more likely to engage in suspicious downloads than are other professors. More interestingly, and more pertinent to our discussion of social comparisons, professors were much more likely to engage in suspicious downloads when their peers had high download counts. The lesson is clear: When those near to us are outshining us, we seek to increase our own apparent performance—and sometimes we are willing to resort to underhanded means to do it.

Social comparisons can also explain why we sabotage and exclude others. Consider Rhonda, age 34, who worked as a secretary in a midsize legal firm. Her boss, sensing her potential, encouraged her to take classes to develop her computer skills. Rhonda and her boss worked out an arrangement to accommodate her class schedule under the condition that she remain at the firm for at least a year after she completed her courses. This agreement represents the best face of cooperation: Both the employee and the firm can benefit.

The interesting part of the story is how Rhonda's coworkers reacted to her arrangement. At first, they congratulated her. But as time went on, according to an account by Cheryl Dellesega, “the emotional climate of the office grows noticeably cooler. Within a month of starting classes, Rhonda is no longer invited to lunch with the other women, and they frequently ‘forget' to pass on important messages to her that arrived while she is in class.”

Though Rhonda's boss initiated a cooperative move with Rhonda, it triggered an invidious social comparison that undermined cooperation from Rhonda's peers. And, not unlike Tonya Harding, they resorted to sabotage.

We are hardwired to seek social comparisons. They help us make sense of our world, and their effect on us can be profound. Sometimes they are a source of comfort. Other times they can make us feel perfectly miserable. Social comparisons can propel us to land a man on the Moon, but they also cause us to abandon our career or cheat to get ahead of a rival. So how can we harness the power of social comparison to work
for
us, rather than bring us down? Consider these two opposing examples.

When John Kennedy ran for president of the United States in 1960, his brother Robert Kennedy put his own political ambitions on hold to stand by his side. In fact, Robert became John's campaign manager, and Robert helped his brother win the presidency.

What enabled the brother politicians John and Robert to cooperate so effectively, but caused David Miliband to leave England because of invidious comparisons with his brother Ed?

There are many reasons to be sure, but we highlight one key distinction: Robert helped his
older
brother win the presidency. But, Ed the
younger
brother challenged—and beat—his older brother. Why does this matter? Because the latter example challenged what we perceive as the natural order of things—we
expect
to see an elder brother achieve success before the younger, and when the opposite occurs, discontent can follow.

Moreover, Robert's status was enhanced by his older brother's victory, so much so that Robert would go on to launch his own run for the White House. But David's status was severely diminished when his younger brother beat him in a head-to-head competition.

Or consider the Williams sisters we discussed earlier. As the Williams sisters rose in the world of tennis, they went in order: Venus, the older sister, rose first. And when Serena reflected on the early years, she accepted the prominence of her older sister: “It was a lot about Venus—it needed to be about Venus.” Venus was ranked No. 1 before Serena was, and in their first matchups, Venus beat Serena. Years later, Serena eclipsed Venus's accomplishments, but because the sisters went in order, the two sisters went on to collaborate seamlessly as one of the world's most dominant doubles teams.

So the first principle of making social comparison work
for
us is to assess whether or not the social comparison is “in” or “out” of order. If we expect our peer to win—and they do—the social comparison can be unpleasant, but it is unlikely to be toxic. If, however, we expect to beat our peer and they win, we need to anticipate a charged emotional reaction.

The second principle of finding the right social comparison balance is providing new opportunities to compete, so that disappointment can be turned into motivation. In other words, will we have the chance to channel regret in a constructive direction?

Athletes who come in second at the Olympics may never get a second shot at the gold. But for most of us, whether we're competing for a job, a promotion, or a position on the neighborhood council, we
will
get a second (or even a third or fourth) chance. So instead of licking our wounds at our defeat at the hands of a rival, we would do well to take matters into our own hands; to get back on that horse and try, try again.

A third key principle to remember about managing social comparisons is to anticipate the possibility that our successes will upset others, even if those around us don't voice their frustration. After buying a new car or renovating a house, we are often excited to share our new purchases or renovations with other people. But we should err on the side of modesty. This means thinking carefully before we post pictures on Facebook of our new purchases, our renovations, and our exotic vacations. People may congratulate us, but keep in mind that when people feel envy, they rarely admit it. As a result, we may easily miss signs that we have triggered social comparisons.

One way to be modest is to share
negative
information. Sure, when you get back from your vacation in Fiji, your coworkers and friends will ask you how it was. So, instead of simply showing them 100 photos of the beautiful vistas and meals, and regaling them with tales of your once-in-a-lifetime experience in a shark cage, try telling them about the day it rained and how you had to stay indoors, or how the airline lost your luggage. You'll be surprised by how satisfied people will be when you allow them to indulge in some schadenfreude.

And finally, when it comes to using social comparison to boost your own motivation, here is the key rule to keep in mind:
Seek favorable comparisons if you want to feel happier, and seek unfavorable comparisons if you want to push yourself harder.
In other words, when you want to feel better about yourself, consider those who are less fortunate. (Or better yet, spend time volunteering for those less fortunate.) Conversely, when you want to light a competitive fire, consider those who have accomplished a bit more than you have.

Even people who have to endure the uncertainty of a serious disease and the trauma of treatment can make comparisons work for them. Consider breast cancer patients. Those who cope well with their illness show a particular pattern of comparisons: They focus on less fortunate peers to make themselves feel better about their own condition, but shift their focus to more fortunate peers to draw inspiration.

This same principle also works in negotiation. Our research with Thomas Mussweiler of the University of Cologne found a way to do well and feel well at the bargaining table. Before we negotiate, we want to find upward comparisons that motivate us to attain the best deal possible. But right after we strike a deal, we want to shift our focus to downward comparisons such as worse deals we could have gotten to maximize our satisfaction.

We close with a Russian parable. The beginning of the story will sound familiar, but like most stories, it is the ending that drives home its moral.

A man stumbles across an old lamp. He raises it for closer inspection and wipes away the dust. As he rubs the lamp, a genie appears. The genie offers to give the man anything he desires, but there is a catch. His neighbor will get double.

The man paces back and forth, thinking furiously. Finally, after several long moments of deep thought he lights up with his answer: “I know what I want! I want you to poke out one of my eyes.”

We've seen how we rely on social comparisons to help us understand where we fit in our social world. But here's one element we haven't yet talked about: the fact that often the most important comparisons we make relate to power. Those with the most power lead, those with the least power follow. We next explore how relative differences in power influence our ability to compete and cooperate, and how we can manage power dynamics to be both a better friend
and
a more formidable foe.

Let's try a little experiment. Close your eyes and think about a time in which you had power—a time in which you controlled an important resource that others wanted or a time when you were in a position to reward another person. Really relive that experience and
feel
what it was like to have that power. Go ahead and take your time, we'll wait.

How did that memory make you feel? If you are like the tens of thousands of people who have done this exercise, it probably gave you a psychological dose of power—a feeling, at least temporarily, that you could accomplish anything. It may have made you feel more confident and more willing to take a chance you wouldn't have taken just moments earlier.

We stumbled upon this technique almost 15 years ago when we found that simply thinking about moments when someone had power actually made that person act as if they were more powerful. What we had done was to “prime” power in people's minds. Once we realized that a key element of power was simply
feeling
powerful, it opened up the door for new ways of creating power.

It was with this insight in mind that Dana Carney of the University of California, Berkeley, came up with another way to instill a sense of power. Simply stand up and put your hands on your hips. Stay in this position for a moment and think about how it makes you feel. Or sit down on a couch and lean back and spread your arms across the back. These are called expansive postures—your body is expanding out and taking up space. Now let's try a different posture. Sit on the edge of a chair, hunch your shoulders forward, and put your hands under your legs. How do you feel in this position? In this posture your body is constricted and confined. In which one did you feel more powerful?

Expansive postures are intimately tied to power. Indeed, dominant individuals across species often expand their postures and take up more space: Northern elephant seals rise up to ward off competitors for mating, the peacock expands its tail to signal its authority, the chimpanzee puffs out its chest by holding its breath to assert its power. Similarly, we've all witnessed how the executive sits back in their oversized chair or stands tall before the board to signal and assert who is in charge.

But these postures can be used to help people
feel
like they have more power. Dana found that simply putting people into one of these expansive postures (which she aptly named a power pose), like sitting back in a chair, standing up straight like Wonder Woman or Superman, or leaning forward on a desk like a boss barking orders, made people feel more powerful.

These are radically new ways of thinking about power. We intuitively know that how we feel influences our physical behavior—that when we feel proud, we stand up a little straighter, that when we feel strong, we grasp someone's handshake a little tighter, etc. But what this research shows is that this relationship also works in reverse; our physical behavior also influences how we feel. In other words, just as we can start a manual transmission car by rolling it down the street, putting the car in gear, and releasing the clutch, we can “roll start” feeling powerful by directing our body in a high-power “gear.”

Some of our most recent research shows that even music can produce feelings of power. In a project led by Dennis Hsu of Northwestern University, we found that songs with strong, powerful beats and bass sounds—like “We Will Rock You” by Queen, “Get Ready for This” by 2 Unlimited, and “In Da Club” by 50 Cent—made people feel and act more powerfully. This may explain why so many athletes, from Colin Kaepernick in football to Serena Williams in tennis, walk into the stadium wearing headphones. Or why, the season after the Miami Heat lost in the NBA finals to the Dallas Mavericks, LeBron James prepared for a rematch by blasting Wu-Tang Clan's “Bring the Pain” (with its lyrics of “Basically, can't fuck with me”) through the locker room. That night, Miami routed Dallas.

Any of these methods—recalling an experience with power, taking on a powerful posture, listening to powerful music—can increase your sense of power. The key is finding the one that works for you. Personally, we favor the recall task. What is nice about recalling an experience when you had power is that
everyone
has had such an experience—anyone can relive those feelings and produce a long-lasting and authentic sense of power. The power of recall also has the most scientific evidence behind it, with hundreds of studies documenting its effects. But again, you can use whichever route—memories, poses, or music—that best helps you kick-start your sense of power.

So now we know what power is, and how to feel more of it. We next turn to how this feeling of power fundamentally alters how we interact with our friends and our foes.

We first became interested in power when our collaborator Deb Gruenfeld, a professor at Stanford University, stepped on a plane in the late 1990s. As she settled into her seat, a man in a suit sat down next to her. The overhead fan was blowing in his face, and he immediately took action to remedy the annoying situation. Rather than simply turn the fan off, however, he redirected it right into Deb's face. In response, Deb just sat there, doing nothing, shivering in frustration. This man had felt entitled to adjust the temperature conditions at will, but Deb felt paralyzed. For months after, Deb stewed: Why had this man acted so quickly and confidently while she dithered?

Now imagine that you walked into a room with five other participants. You all sit down around a table and write an essay. Half of you are asked to write about a time when you had power, while the other half are instructed to write about a time when someone had power over you. When you are done with the essay, you are placed in your private room to fill out some surveys. The door closes behind you, and as you settle into your chair, you realize that there is a fan blowing directly into your face. What do you do? Remember, it is unclear whether or not you are allowed to adjust this annoying fan; whether you can turn it off or redirect it.

In one experiment, we purposely created this situation to see who would tinker with the fan and who would sit there getting colder and colder. In other words, we wanted to re-create the psychological experience that Deb had experienced on the plane.

It turned out that those who had been randomly assigned to think about a time they had power were 65 percent more likely to turn off or redirect the fan than someone who had thought about having little power. Simply recalling an experience in which they had power in one room led these individuals to assert agency and power to make their world a more comfortable place to be in the next room.

Being primed with power even changes our voice. In a project led by Sei Jin Ko of San Diego State University, we had participants read a passage to measure the baseline acoustics of each participant's voice. We then had participants recall an experience with power. Finally, we had participants read their opening statement in a negotiation, and measured whether power changed their acoustic properties. Here is what we found: Participants conveyed a steadier pitch and a greater shift between being loud and quiet—that is, they varied their pitch less and their volume more—after imagining they had power. Like our subjects, Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister, learned to speak with greater authority by varying her volume more but her pitch less. (Thatcher went through vocal training to express this authority in her voice.)

But were these effects noticeable to the naked ear? To find out, we later played the recordings of all of our speakers to listeners at a different university. Without knowing that power had been manipulated in the experiment, these listeners reported that those primed with power
sounded
more authoritative and more powerful.

As it turns out, there is a neurological explanation behind these effects of power. When Maarten Boksem and colleagues from Tilburg University used an EEG to measure brain activity in people who had been primed to think about power, they found that recalling an experience with power actually increased brain activity on the frontal left side of the brain.

This finding tells us something fundamental about why power produces all of the effects we just described, like feelings of authority and confidence. Much of human behavior is driven by the interplay between two brain systems. One is the inhibition system, which helps people avoid negative outcomes. The other system is the approach system, which directs our attention toward achieving positive outcomes. The approach system resides in that frontal left side of the brain, the side of the brain that gets activated in those who feel powerful. It is this left-hemisphere activation that causes us to behave like the man on the plane and take action to achieve the outcome we want.

Evidence of these effects of power can even be seen in our blood. Dana Carney has found that power leads individuals to experience decreased cortisol, a stress hormone that serves as a psychological inhibitor. Similarly, in our research with Jennifer Jordan of the University of Groningen, we have found that power reduces physiological stress as measured by heart rate and systolic blood pressure.

Neurologically, hormonally, and physiologically, it feels good to be the king. And when we
feel
like a king, we are more likely to act like one.

So, recalling an experience with power can temporarily change how we feel and act. But are there longer-term effects?