The Sit-Down: Ashley Merryman, author

I f I were to give you a pop quiz right now … how many of you would want to start your score with a zero and gain points for every right answer? And how many of you want to start with 100 percent and lose points for every wrong answer?
 
Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin … found that at the beginning of the semester students did the best with a zero and gaining points. But at the end of the semester they did the best with 100 percent and losing points. Crazy the more we think about it.
 
That switch that [the students] didn’t even know they’d done changed what they learn and what they can do with the information they have.

Photo by: MARC BRYAN-BROWN

When I was writing “Top Dog,” Po [Bronson, her co-author] and I called this the difference between playing to win and playing not to lose.
 
These terms are sort of thrown around in sports as metaphors all the time, but the research actually shows that they’re not just mere metaphors. They’re entirely different strategies with different consequences.

Even physiological changes take place if you’re playing to win or playing not to lose.
 
Let’s think about what’s in that Olympian’s head when he thinks about that race. If I win the gold, there’s a chance I could set an American or world record, which obviously is my gate into history.
 
Now think about that Olympian who’s playing not to lose.
 
Nothing to celebrate because I’m not celebrating. I wasn’t actually thinking about the win. I was thinking about not losing.
 
You can be the No. 1 guy on Wall Street. You can be the No. 1 athlete in the world. If you walk down the street thinking, “I’ve got a bull’s-eye on my back and it’s only a matter of time before somebody gets me,” that’s playing not to lose.
 
The research has shown this is particularly important for women. … Women just refuse to spend time on losing. They want to be right.

What does it matter? Why do women care? … Joyce Benenson, a researcher at Harvard, she has the best answer that I can find. She says that basically what it is, is boys grow up in groups and girls grow up in pairs.
 
If you put 6-year-olds in a room and you let them play however they want, boys spend 74 percent of their time in a group activity. Girls [spend] 16 percent. When you put two boys together and you time interaction it’s half as long as the girls’ pair interaction.
 
Groups actually give you the room to be different because you can play to your strengths and find out what you want to do. As long as you’re supporting the purpose in the group, you’re good to go.
 
In a 2013 study of every World Cup alpine skiing race from 1992 to 2013 … they found that only 7 percent of professional alpine skiers ever make it on to the podium their entire career. … But 40 percent of those winners go on to win the next race too.
 
What the researchers found was, it wasn’t that that winner got better, it was that the people that were No. 2 and No. 3 and No. 4 got worse. Specifically, the women. Nine percent less effective.
 

It’s this constant sort of second-guessing ourselves … and taking ourselves out of the game before we even try.
 
What do we do then? Can we fix this? … The research, I think, starts to suggest that we can.
 
For the scientists, they say we’re talking about a challenge and a threat. A challenge is, very simply, do you have the skills, resources, ability [and] knowledge to succeed? Can you do it?

And a threat [is when] you don’t have the skills, resources, knowledge and ability to succeed.
 
In a threat state, it’s a feeling of dread. Danger. Something bad is coming.

Because something bad is coming, you’re on hyperalert and you’re only looking for the bad things. When … it comes up something can go wrong, you’re hyperfocused on it so you get this exaggerated response.
 
In a challenge state, all of the muscles lining the blood vessels in your entire body cause your veins to dilate so you get more oxygenated blood circulating. Your heart rate variability improves.
 
You get an increase of adrenaline versus noradrenaline. You get a boost of testosterone versus cortisol. Your lungs have a similar dilation process so that you can actually breathe more oxygen to actually get all that oxygen through the blood.
 
Twenty-three to 27 percent of an athlete’s performance in competition is based on stress. In academic context, it’s somewhere between 8 percent of a kid’s grade — that’s not bad — but some lab studies have found 50 percent of a grade on a test is because of stress.

If everything you do is an opportunity for growth, you should always be in a challenge state because you should always be excited about the opportunity. The outcome is irrelevant because I know I’m going to learn from it win, lose or draw.
 
We all need to think about how is something an opportunity for growth.