No Contest: The Case Against Competition [Paperback]

Alfie Kohn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 1992

No Contest stands as the definitive critique of competition. Contrary to accepted wisdom, competition is not basic to human nature; it poisons our relationships and holds us back from doing our best. In this new edition, Alfie Kohn argues that the race to win turns all of us into losers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Contending that competition in all areasschool, family, sports and businessis destructive, and that success so achieved is at the expense of another's failure, Kohn, a correspondent for USA Today, advocates a restructuring of our institutions to replace competition with cooperation. He persuasively demonstrates how the ingrained American myth that competition is the only normal and desirable way of lifefrom Little Leagues to the presidencyis counterproductive, personally and for the national economy, and how psychologically it poisons relationships, fosters anxiety and takes the fun out of work and play. He charges that competition is a learned phenomenon and denies that it builds character and self-esteem. Kohn's measures to encourage cooperation in lieu of competition include promoting noncompetitive games, eliminating scholastic grades and substitution of mutual security for national security.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Kohn, a journalist whose work has appeared in such publications as The Nation and Psychology Today , has written a timely summary of research and commentary by others on the psychology of competitiveness. He seeks to debunk "the rationalizations for competition"that it is inevitable, more productive, more enjoyable, and likely to build character. In closely reasoned argument he shows that, while competition is deeply ingrained, it is also inherently destructive, especially where self-esteem is contingent on winning at the expense of others. The book, which lacks depth only in its discussion of organizational behavior and the incentive for creativity, will provoke considerable discussion. Recommended for general collections and subject collections on social interaction. William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 2nd, Revised edition (November 12, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395631254
• ISBN-13: 978-0395631256
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #98 in Books > Business & Investing > Business Life > Ethics

More About the Author

Alfie Kohn is the author of nine previous books, including Punished by Rewards and The Schools Our Children Deserve, that have helped to shape the thinking of parents and educators across the country and abroad. He lectures widely and lives (actually) with his family in the Boston area.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The competitive mindset can be unlearned, September 3, 2001

By 

Coert Visser "solutionfocusedchange.com" (Driebergen Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Paperback)

In this inspiring and well-researched book Alfie Kohn describes how we, in our compulsion to rank ourselves against one another, turn almost everything into a contest (at work, at school, at play, at home). Often, we assume that working toward a goal and setting standards for ourselves can only take place if we compete against others. By perceiving tasks or play as a contest we often define the situation to be one of MEGA: mutually exclusive goal attainment.

This means: my success depends on your failure. Is this wise? No! Is this inevitable? No! This book brilliantly shows how: 1) competitiveness is NOT an inevitable feature of human nature (in fact, human nature is overwhelmingly characterised by its opposite - co-operation), 2) superior performance not only does not require competition; it usually seems to require its absence (because competition often distracts people from the task at hand, the collective does usually not benefit from our individual struggles against each other), 3) competition in sports might be less healthy than we usually think because it contributes to the competitive mindset (while research shows that non-competitive games can be at least as enjoyable and challenging as competitive ones), 4) competition does not build good character; it undermines self esteem (most competitors lose most of the time because by definition not everyone can win), 5) competition damages relationships, 6) a competitive mindset makes transforming of organizations and society harder (those things requiring a collective effort and a long-term commitment).

I think many people reading this book will recognize in themselves their tendency to think competitively and will feel challenged and inspired to change. And that's a good thing. Our fates are linked. People need to, and can choose to, build a culture in which pro-social behaviors and a co-operative mindset are stimulated. The competitive mindset can be unlearned. By developing a habit to see and define tasks as co-operative we can defy the usual egoism/altruism dichotomy: by helping the other person you are helping yourself.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning: this book could change your life, March 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Paperback)

A friend recommended this to me because it changed her life. It is changing mine as well. Like the fish who has suddenly become aware of the water around him, I have become aware of the competitive environment in which we live - and how that environment is slowly poisoning us.

Kohn defines competition as "mutually exclusive goal attainment" - a situation where someone wins only if others lose. This type of structure, by its very nature, erodes human relationships. Kohn is not asking us to do away with incentives or tests - he is asking us to stop using them to determine a "winner." Kohn shows that people in a cooperative setting will attain a goal with more efficiency and creativity than people in a competitive setting.

But what about market competitiveness and the benefits for consumers? Yes, but think of the goal, the driving force behind this: making more money than the next company. That means polluting the environment (cleaner is usually more expensive), exploiting workers (the so-called minimum wage is not enough for anyone to live on), and even committing fraud. As Kohn explains, the nature of competition means that the goal becomes the most important thing. Everything else is merely an obstacle; everyone else an enemy.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't read this book - it has thrown my view of the world upside down and made me question my work at a management consulting company. But I realize this is just the initial discomfort one feels after walking out of a dark room into the sunlight. The glare may hurt at first, but after your eyes have adjusted, you appreciate the new world you see around you. This book may hurt at first, but give it a chance and see if it doesn't change your world and your relationships for the better.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Did Adam Smith Get It Wrong?, February 23, 2007

By 

Mark Lundegren (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No Contest: The Case Against Competition (Paperback)

Having just finished No Contest: The Case Against Competition, fully twenty years after its first publication, I feel like someone coming late to a party, only to find few have arrived before me in what I expected to be a crowded gathering. Scanning the divergent and often passionate Amazon reviews offered on this provocative, original, and gentle but thoroughly radical critique of our society, I felt compelled to add my voice and ask, simply, did Adam Smith get it wrong?

However you might answer that question, now or after reading No Contest, you will agree that the implications of your own answer are considerable, for you and, perhaps, for us all. Your ideas about competition are fundamental to the way you will live your life each day, to the type of world you will work to create, and to how you will feel about and treat those of us who are around you.

Across twenty-five reviews of No Contest spanning a decade, the book garners a solid four out of five stars, but there is a divergence in these reviews that is telling and important. Amidst mostly five-star ratings and words of praise and encouragement for what is an excellent work, consistently about twenty percent of reviewers rank this book very low and offer commentary that is quite dismissive. These latter reviews seem, in some cases, to lack poignancy and clear expression, an infraction Kohn cannot be accused of, and some are quite hostile.

I bring up this persistent disparity of reactions to No Contest because it underscores a central hypothesis of Kohn's work: that competition and the competitive structures around us alters us. Kohn's assembled research suggests that competition makes us reactive, aggressive, closed to new ideas and inimical to alternatives, bound to the rules of the games we are made to play.

Competition, Kohn argues, makes us less sensitive, less productive, less creative, and perhaps less intelligent. Competition narrows our focus and makes us less able to see our frames of reference for what they are - frames. Ones that are in truth malleable and expandable, and as such, ultimately indefensible. Life in competitive structures, life in a competitive mindset, may even make us less engaged in life itself, as it almost certainly makes us less engaged in others and their lives.

I read No Contest on the recommendation of a friend, after a brief but lasting conversation on the practical virtues of cooperation. As a friend, even if we have not met, I will recommend this book to you too. I make this recommendation with the certainty that No Contest will at least give you an interesting perspective on modern life, that it might provoke and irritate you, and that it may, as other reviewers have noted, cause you to wake up and live differently each day. I certainly feel this third way, and think the book is worth reading, simply given its potential to affect you in this way.

As a book that compiles a diverse body of research, No Contest is technically impressive, especially given its seemingly uncharted subject. Even after twenty years, and even as it is disagreeable to some, I found the book extremely well planned, elegantly written, carefully reasoned, and finely passionate. For some, No Contest will be worth having for the bibliography alone, which is extensive. In fact, its assembled evidence and the startling conclusions they lead to is part of the potentially mind-altering nature of the book. No Contest was not what I expected, and likely will not be what you expect now, with divergent views and passionate reviews apt to continue for some time to come.

A few reviewers have criticized No Contest for not offering enough practical guidance, but I am content to be left to think, and think practically, about its many ideas and conclusions, on my own and with others. We all live in a practical world and so do need work at what we value, but we also need to wonder a bit: if cooperation is superior to competition in category after category of human affairs, why is there simply not more of it around us? Some might argue that cooperation is in fact there, but masked by the heavy and obvious icons of competitiveness that frame modern materialist society.

As I am affected and willing to consider this and the many other important questions the book engenders, perhaps you will be too. Game theory and computer modeling of the last two decades, coming after this book was published, may offer insights into the conditions under which competitive and cooperative structures win out, but as yet not a clear and recognizable path to the states of sustaining cooperation posed as possible and desirable by Kohn. (I would welcome being googled and corrected on this last point.)

One last thought: beginning in the 1970s, the organizational psychologists Chris Argyris and Donald Schon wrote about empirically far more common "model I" group dynamics and, also empirically, far more effective "model II" behaviors. I always was comfortable with these neat non-labels, and thought I understood what they entailed, tacitly attributing the difference to levels of individual and group stress. After reading No Contest, though, I am now far more inclined to think these human patterns should rightly be renamed for what they really are: "competitive" and "cooperative" group dynamics. I'll leave you to consider this idea, important for people working with others and suggestive of what you will encounter with No Contest.

To end somewhat near where I began, let me finish by saying that No Contest is an awakening for many people and an irritant and even an outrage for a few, probably to all who are disciples of Adam Smith, or deacons in the world his ideas have wrought. No Contest stirred in me both a child and an old man, each wiser in the way children and elders can be wise - in their propensity for innocence and in their indifference to headstrong heads - and I hope No Contest will be this for you and more.