We often imagine that the great artists from history did their art for art’s sake and that they cared little about how they stacked up against their peers.
The reality is that most of the great art we have today is thanks to intense competition.
For example, fervent competition infused the culture of the Renaissance.
First, there was competition in the bottega, or workshop, where apprentices would simultaneously cooperate on the work of their masters while viciously competing with one another to be the best. Praising the competitive environment of the bottega, Leonardo da Vinci once wrote, “You will be ashamed to be counted among draughtsmen if your work is inadequate, and this disgrace must motivate you to profitable study. Secondly, a healthy envy will stimulate you to become one of those who are praised more than yourself, for the praises of others will spur you on.”
Second, artists and their patrons competed intensely among themselves in the free market. It was common in art contracts during the Renaissance to have clauses guaranteeing that an artist would outdo another artist’s work. If the artist didn’t fulfill his contract, he didn’t get paid. For example, in one of Raphael’s contracts, he agreed to create an altarpiece that was better than a work by Perugino. He did and was rewarded handsomely for it.
Modern research has born out what these Renaissance artists experienced firsthand. For example, in one study musicians were asked to improvise music on a keyboard in both a non-competitive and competitive environment. Their improvised tunes were then judged by a panel of ten experts. Improvisers in the competitive setting did feel more stress, but they were also more intrinsically motivated about the task, and ended up producing music that was judged more creative than that which was made by those in the non-competitive condition.
Another study done at Colgate University found that judges tended to rate children’s creative work as more creative when the children had been told beforehand that their creation was for a contest compared to when they were told it was just for fun.
Granted, not all kids get this creativity boost from competition. Just as in Triplett’s experiment, some children weren’t affected by the competition, and some children performed worse, but most were more creative when they thought that they were competing with each other.
Thus while we often think that competition is the antithesis of creativity, and that real, “authentic” artists create only for themselves and are motivated solely through the muses, a little external pressure, and the ethos of contest, might be just the thing to unlock the full potential of one’s talents.
The bottom line from Part I is that competition begets some powerfully positive benefits, but does come with some caveats. It can spur you to go the extra mile, develop your capacity for cooperation and morality, and boost your creativity. But it doesn’t do so for everyone. For some groups, it has no, or the opposite effect. And that’s because for these folks, the pressure and stress of competition gets to them. They get nervous; they choke; they get overwhelmed and plain give up. It’s often for this reason that modern society has soured on competition; it seeks to protect those whose psyche and performance might suffer in a competitive atmosphere.
Yet removing competition to protect one set of people from potential harm, also removes the conditions under which another set would thrive and reach an even higher level of performance.
Might there be a way to mitigate the ill effects of competition for the great majority of people while harnessing its potentially positive benefits for the greatest number of folks?
Happily, there is.
How we react to the pressure of competition comes down to a mixture of nature and nurture. The chapters of Part II will offer tips which will address both these factors, and can be applied to helping you make the most of competition as an individual, as well as how to best incorporate a competitive atmosphere on an institutional level.
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