Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing by Po Bronson (PDF)

Description

New York Times Bestseller Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s work changes the national dialogue. Beyond their bestselling books, you know them from commentary and features in the New York Times, CNN, NPR, Time, Newsweek, Wired, New York, and more. E-mail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts are filled with demands to read their reporting (such as “How Not to Talk to Your Kids,” “Creativity Crisis,” and “Losing Is Good for You”). In Top Dog, Bronson and Merryman again use their astonishing blend of science and storytelling to reveal what’s truly in the heart of a champion. The joy of victory and the character-building agony of defeat. Testosterone and the neuroscience of mistakes. Why rivals motivate. How home field advantage gets you a raise. What teamwork really requires. It’s baseball, the SAT, sales contests, and Linux. How before da Vinci and FedEx were innovators, first, they were great competitors. Olympians carry Top Dog in their gym bags. It’s in briefcases of Wall Street traders and Madison Avenue madmen. Risk takers from Silicon Valley to Vegas race to implement its ideas, as educators debate it in halls of academia. Now see for yourself what this game-changing talk is all about.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (authors of Nurtureshock) have written a book whose large message (kind of) bucks the trend of the self-esteem movement: while some people do worse under the pressure of competition, competitive situations (whether against oneself or others) seem to bring out many people’s best. The book is devoted to ‘filling in’ that basic thesis with scientific data from a vast array of fields from behavioral economics to neoroscience.First, the basics of how stress and our reaction to it work. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that produces adrenaline, the body’s way of contfronting on stressful situations. COMT is an enzyme that degrades dopamine. People’s bodies produce varying levels of dopamine, low dopamine levels leading to an overall competition-avoiding personality, etc. These two ‘work together’ to determine how a person will react to stress and competition. If your body produces a lot of dopamine naturally, but also produces a high level of COMT (to degrade the dopamine), you may handle stress and competition quite well. If you produce the same high level of dopamine but have a low level of COMT (meaning less dopamine is degraded), you may end up being the type who gets stressed very easily, “overreacting” to mildly stressful situations. Low dopamine levels and high COMT may produce someone who doesn’t react strongly enough in stressful or competitive situations. Etc.But the book also talks about the differences in how men and women generally compete. Conventional wisdom tends to say that women aren’t very competitive naturally (and those who are have simply learned to get on in a man’s competitive world. But like much common wisdom, there is only a grain of truth to this. Pouring over studies of behavior and neuroscience, the authors make a case that women are as competitive as men, but simply are more judicious about when they enter competition…. generally when they believe they have a realistic chance of winning. Women, in other words, look at the odds of whether they have a chance to win, and if they think they do, they compete every bit as hard as men. Men, on the other hand, tend to place more emphasis on what they would gain if they did win (than what their chances are of winning). The authors do refrain from suggesting that one strategy is better than the other; in fact, both strategies may have evolved because they have survival value in different contexts. But they do give some surprising stats showing, for instance, that women investors and money managers have a better track record with their somewhat more conservative strategy than men, who frequently make riskier investment choices.There are some other great challenges to the conventional wisdom here. Foremost is a reassessment of what testosterone and oxytocin are and do. For a long time, scientists told us that testosterone was simply the “aggression drug” and that oxytocin is the “care/empathy drug.” It turns out that things are quite a bit more complicated than this. Studies are showing that testosterone can not only increase one’s aggression, but increase allegiance with a group when that group is in competition with another group. (Soccor players with high levels of testosterone seem more likely to do things like pass the ball and assist so that team mates can score.) Similarly, oxytocin does not just increase care and empathy, but care and empathy toward those in one’s in-group (it also increases aggression against those in the out-group).Lastly, I think an overall message we should take from the book is that competition is not necessarily the bad, intrinsic-motivation-killing, thing (especially when kids are concerned) that we have been told it is by the “self-esteem movement.” Yes, some people do not thrive, but wither, when they are faced with competitive situations. But most actually do better when they compete either against themselves or others. Kids who compete often learn to care more about the activity they are doing (sport, music, etc) than those who do not compete at those same activities. Competition also helps people learn to deal with being in stressful situations, both at how to be successful in them AND cope with lack of success. (Of course, they are also careful to acknowledge that healthy competition has necessary conditions, like competitors being mindful of sticking to rules of fair play, and the competition being designed so that competitors believe it to be a fair fight.)Overall, this book was very interesting to read. While written in a easy-going style, there is much information here, and those wanting to look at the more scholarly literature will find a large section of citations pointing them to articles they can pursue further. Teacher, parents, company executives, and just the generally interested lay public should all be able to find something in this book that can help them understand why and how we (should) compete.

⭐Much thanks!

⭐If you enjoyed Nurture Shock, you will enjoy this book even more. In Top Dog, Bronson and Merryman delve into why some thrive under competition while others despair. Their conclusions are supported with explanations of experiments and studies that are easy to understand. Here are a few of their conclusions:- one’s dopamine level (genetically determined) can determine whether someone thrives or has a meltdown during a standardized test;- how women are better able to calculate risk than men and because of that, they often shy away from high risk competitions;- how women do better when surrounded by people who are much better at a given task but men become disillusioned and become reclusive;- how youngest children are more apt to thrive under competition and take more risks than older children or only childs;- how entrepreneurs often have longer fourth finger in relation to the index finger (determined by fetal testosterone and the testosterone in the mother’s bloodstream during gestation);- how an environment can influence someone to perform better under pressure (focusing on winning instead of focusing on not losing….This book is so enjoyable to read and so full of information. I hope they write another book after this.

⭐This book will help you be a stonger competitor in the sense that you will win more. The studies and science are indepth and well explained. However, I am only writing this review as a word of cuation. After applying the principles in the books for almost a week now, I can safely say my life is not any better. In fact it is worse. I no longer feel peaceful and content. I also feel a bit stubborn. I think this is from the hyper competitive state I have been in. I no longer want to participate in things that might be commpetitive. This is me though, and my understandings are certainly not scientific. If you want to perform better, atleast in the short term, and understand the positive side of competition better, then this book is great. I don’t give it a five stars because I feel it only views competition in a positive light. But thats understandable since the authors are trying to sell the book and make money. Good luck, enjoy this well writen and informitive book, but be careful.

⭐Real page turner. I found myself already currently reading a book, and when this arrived i enjoyed the hybrid of the science and psychology, I found myself puttingy my current read on pause. A real backed up insight into what it takes to be a success, over being mediocre.

⭐Overall, It’s a well writed book. It meets my expectations providing usefull examples and practical implications, so far. The pocket size is suitable for trip.

⭐Superb read, well worth a few hours of your time

⭐Competition – be it in school, during sports, at work, in politics, or at home – is very much an ever present component of our lives and certainly something we can all benefit from understanding better. Bronson and Merryman have made a credible start at explaining how we compete differently, to what extent this is genetically predetermined and which areas of our handling of competitive pressure remain to be shaped by conscious acts – ours or those of coaches, parents, bosses, etc.Like the authors’ previous joint work –

⭐Nurtureshock: Why Everything We Thought About Children is Wrong

⭐- the book heavily relies on up to date science but never strays too deep. This means it will more than satisfy the casual reader but may leave people, who have previously already explored the topic somewhat, not completely satisfied.Just like in

⭐Nurtureshock: Why Everything We Thought About Children is Wrong

⭐one can only compliment the authors for not trying to squeeze a myriad examples into a limited framework, which would make it both bloated and repetitive. While there are plenty of examples given, they are used to develop the topic further, to explore the effects of our genetic endowment, as well as those that come from our nurturing in the formative years, and from the competitive context we are put into.The real value of the book in my eyes also lies in comparing and contrasting different approaches, as well as indirectly advising how to ameliorate our inborn attitudes to competition. One for instance learns how boys compete differently from girls, and what effect that has on career success later on in life; what type of educational environment is most suited to which gender child, as well as to which competitive profile; how sports success can be achieved even by people who are more worriers than warriors; why so few women actually enter high level politics or top managerial positions (it is not exclusively discrimination that plays a role (and this is not just a chauvinistic male position, as one of the authors is herself female)), etc.In style it is very much like a Malcolm Gladwell book (think

⭐The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

⭐or

⭐Outliers: The Story of Success

⭐), meaning very readable and quite informative at the same time, and definitely erring on the side of readability, rather than depth.So if you want to better understand why certain people – be they your children, partner, friends and family, colleagues or yourself – compete in specific ways, or get tips on how to alter the environment to make them or yourself more successful at it, the book is a very good start. It will not be an in-depth scientific treatise (a full list of references is provided for those interested in further reading) but will probably allow you to dip your toes into the topic sufficiently deeply, to at least seriously consider further ‘competition’ choices more thoroughly, or to understand the outcomes better.

⭐I was a big fan of Bronson and Merryman’s earlier book

⭐NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

⭐. In it they summarized several specific lines of developmental/child psychology research. This book is different in that it focuses on a sole topic- winning and losing. The essential thesis of this book is that competition is good and that we should encourage its development in our children and in ourselves.The authors compile a pretty strong case that competition fosters creativity and best efforts from individuals. Drawing largely on the worlds of sports and business, they suggest that competition is a necessary component for success. They also cite neurological and hormonal evidence for how the body responds positively to competition, at least for people who embrace rather than fear competition. They build a relatively compelling case, but there are some important flaws.First, they do not discuss the science of losing and how the body and brain respond to inevitable failures. In this regard, the recent book

⭐The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

⭐offers a more complete science of winning and losing. Second, by failing to ignore the consequences of failure, they overestimate the value of competition. Look at Wall Street and what rampant competition for bonuses has done. Granted, there is government protection from failure, but that is due to another form of competition- lobbying. Competition has also failed to bring more women into high finance, despite their superior performance in that arena. Third, some of their evidence is misleading. The top 10% of physicists publish 50% of the research because they win 50% of the grant money. There is actually good evidence that creativity in science is a matter of chance. More frequent publishers make more frequent significant discoveries, but it’s hard to tease apart whether that’s because they have the better funding, labs, and students to do so versus the better mental ability to do so. Fourth, there are many times when competition and risk taking is not your best choice. It helps win wars, but it also helps get you killed in war. Fifth, they don’t discuss the biggest competitors and risk-takers: young men. Daly & Wilson’s book

⭐Homicide

⭐does a great job illuminating how young men are programmed to task risks to gain status (and thus mates). This underlies much of the risk-taking and competitive differences the authors see between men (who are relatively blind to risk when chasing rewards) versus women (who need good odds before chasing rewards). Drawing on the same evolutionary evidence as Bronson and Merryman, we now know that an “ancestral” woman who dies in competition will almost certainly result in the death of her young children. The same is not true of a man, as the man stands to benefit much more from winning status competitions such as multiple mates (most human societies were polygynous). This naturally biases men to be reward-focused while women are risk-averse (in general). It also explains why women are dyadic in their competitions while men are both individual and group-oriented. As I discussed with Joyce Beneson (the researcher’s whose work they cite on this issue), men can be ruthlessly dyadic under the right circumstances (e.g., competing over a woman) while also capable of ignoring dyadic issues (e.g., when threatened by another group of men). It’s not that men don’t compete dyadically, they simply have a higher threshold for when such competition becomes important as it could otherwise be a threat to male solidarity and group defense. I could go on, but suffice to say I think the authors tackled a really big topic and are missing out on numerous details (some small, some major).So why four stars? Well, there’s still plenty of solid science here and the authors are good writers. They do a good job bringing an interesting issue to light. The book could benefit from better balance in discussing all sides of competition, including losing and a lack of risk taking in order to fully be the science of winning and losing. If you’re looking for a book on the science of winning and losing, this is a two or three star book. Instead, this book should be called Top Dog: The Science of Competing. In that regard, especially if you take the results with a grain of salt, it’s definitely a four-star book and one I enjoyed reading. I certainly sympathize with their overall conclusion that healthy competition is a good thing that we should both encourage and strengthen ourselves towards.

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