Pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior

Competitive behavior is commonly defined as the decision to maximize one's payoffs relative to others. We argue instead that competitive drive derives from a desire for social status. We make use of a multi-player auction task in which subjects knowingly incur financial losses for the sake of w...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	van den Bos, Wouter, Golka, Philipp J. M., Effelsberg, David, McClure, Samuel M.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2013
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3805938/

id	pubmed-3805938
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-38059382013-10-28 Pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior van den Bos, Wouter Golka, Philipp J. M. Effelsberg, David McClure, Samuel M. Neuroscience Competitive behavior is commonly defined as the decision to maximize one's payoffs relative to others. We argue instead that competitive drive derives from a desire for social status. We make use of a multi-player auction task in which subjects knowingly incur financial losses for the sake of winning auctions. First, we show that overbidding is increased when the task includes members of a rival out-group, suggesting that social identity is an important mediator of competitiveness. In addition, we show that the extent that individuals are willing to incur losses is related to affective responses to social comparisons but not to monetary outcomes. Second, we show that basal levels of testosterone predict overbidding, and that this effect of testosterone is mediated by affective responses to social comparisons. Based on these findings, we argue that competitive behavior should be conceptualized in terms of social motivations as opposed to just relative monetary payoffs. Frontiers Media S.A. 2013-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3805938/ /pubmed/24167468 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2013.00189 Text en Copyright © 2013 van den Bos, Golka, Effelsberg and McClure. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	van den Bos, Wouter Golka, Philipp J. M. Effelsberg, David McClure, Samuel M.
spellingShingle	van den Bos, Wouter Golka, Philipp J. M. Effelsberg, David McClure, Samuel M. Pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior
author_facet	van den Bos, Wouter Golka, Philipp J. M. Effelsberg, David McClure, Samuel M.
author_sort	van den Bos, Wouter
title	Pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior
title_short	Pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior
title_full	Pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior
title_fullStr	Pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior
title_full_unstemmed	Pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior
title_sort	pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior
description	Competitive behavior is commonly defined as the decision to maximize one's payoffs relative to others. We argue instead that competitive drive derives from a desire for social status. We make use of a multi-player auction task in which subjects knowingly incur financial losses for the sake of winning auctions. First, we show that overbidding is increased when the task includes members of a rival out-group, suggesting that social identity is an important mediator of competitiveness. In addition, we show that the extent that individuals are willing to incur losses is related to affective responses to social comparisons but not to monetary outcomes. Second, we show that basal levels of testosterone predict overbidding, and that this effect of testosterone is mediated by affective responses to social comparisons. Based on these findings, we argue that competitive behavior should be conceptualized in terms of social motivations as opposed to just relative monetary payoffs.
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2013
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3805938/
_version_	1612020140029771776

Pyrrhic victories: the need for social status drives costly competitive behavior

Similar Items