I link the phenomenon to

1. The Winner Effect: How Success Affects
Brain Chemistry
By Eugene Sheely
© E V Sheely 2014
“Winning increases the dopamine receptors in the brain, which
makes you smarter and more bold” - Ian H. Robertson
There is a very interesting phenomenon in biology that I want to link to
gamification, called “the winner effect.” When an animal, be it fish or
human, wins a contest, there is a large release of testosterone and dopamine
into their brain. Over time this changes their brains structure and chemical
makeup, making them smarter, more confident and able to take on larger
challenges than before. Cognitive neuroscientist Ian Robertson explains that
“success and failure shapes us more powerfully than genetics and drugs.”
Nurture changes nature.
The winner effect is a well-researched phenomenon in different competitive
fields, such as chess, sports and business. In the book The Hour Between Dog
and Wolf, John Coates describes the effect of winning on Wall Street traders.
His research focuses on how testosterone and cortisol affect the profits of
traders in the real world. Ian H. Robertson has also written on how winning
can be better adapted for educational purposes, but serves enterprises as well.
Both deliver the same message: winning will change your biology, making
you more likely to overcome increasingly harder challenges in the future.
A core part of winner effect depends on dopamine releases that come from
game mechanics, which gamification designers use to make something fun.
Testosterone is not a topic that I have seen discussed in gamification, but it is
also a hormone released during competition. All competitors release it before
a big game, and afterwards usually only the winners will get a boost while

2. the losers’ testosterone falls. This opposite effect with testosterone reduction
is called the “loser effect.” It makes the loser meek and timid over time, its
submissiveness an evolutionary advantage preventing it from getting into
future fights that could cost it its life since it has a history of losing.
Testosterone often has negative connotations like being linked to violence
and aggression, but it also has the effect of social bonding and the drive to
protect close friends and loved ones. The same brain circuitry used for love is
also used for hate, new research claims.
Po Bronson stated in an interview:
“Collaboration and competition are the same hormone: testosterone.
There’s no such thing as collaborating without competition in the
real world. To compete does not mean to cheat or break the rules, it
means to go head-to-head and be better than your opponent.
Certainly inside a corporation people need to collaborate for the
corporation to be competitive.”
Studies done on the effects of testosterone on subjects playing video games
by the evolutionary psychologist David Geary have intriguing outcomes. If a
group of friends teams up and wins against strangers in an online first-person
shooter game, their testosterone goes up (winner effect), the top-scoring
player getting the highest testosterone boost. If these same friends play
individually against each other, testosterone drops for everyone (loser effect),
and the player scoring highest in this game against friends gets penalized by
the highest testosterone plunge. Evolution punishes backstabbers.
These effects will happen in the real world regardless of gamification; it is a
fact of life in all human relations. The use of game mechanics could be used
to manipulate them for a desired effect though. For instance, competing
against colleagues probably lowers the performance of your entire team since
the brain punishes competition with friends (loser effect). In order to enhance
a team by fostering cohesion and a collective winner effect, it is better to
compete as a team against other teams of strangers, perhaps, an office in
another city or overseas.
It is important not to downplay the performance of top players in an
ideological attempt for egalitarianism and fairness, because that will drive
your team into mediocrity. An MMO guild acknowledges everyone’s

3. contribution, but treasure is divided unequally, depending on the output of
each individual. Studies show that unequal pay for equal work and vice versa
pisses off monkeys… and humans.
As primatologist Robert Sapolsky says in an excellent Wired
Magazine article discussing the effects of testosterone on Wall Street:
“As a species, we share the same biology with other animals, but
express it uniquely. We can have two humans sitting at a table doing
nothing more physically taxing than one of them moving a little
piece of wood on the table. And if it happens that these two
individuals are at a chess tournament, then they are able to keep [up]
a blood pressure for six hours [at a level] that you normally only see
in a marathon runner, while doing nothing more than thinking. And
this is outrageous because when you look at these chess Grand
Masters who’ve just taken down an opponent, they will have the
exact same physiology of some wild baboon in the savannah who
has just ripped open the stomach of his worst rival.”
Gives a whole new perspective to “It’s just a game,” does it not?
It is all power games. What you must understand is that your brain is always
subconsciously assessing what your strength and status is compared to others,
and realigning your behavior and intelligence in a way that allows you to
play it safe. For example, studies show that if you enter a situation where you
have low status in a group, it will literally lower your IQ. Intelligence is not
fixed, it fluctuates based on social context. Research on power by Stanford
professor Deborah Gruenfeld reveals that we are always establishing social
hierarchies in subtle ways with our body language, voice tone, level of
assessed expertise, etc.
When you win, your brain is essentially saying “I’m powerful enough to be
the boss now” and begins to change itself biologically to become smarter and
more assertive in order to maintain its position on top of a social hierarchy.
By winning as a group, the subconscious minds of teams say “We are in
charge now” and begin to change accordingly. Their body language becomes
more open to establish status, and others (competitors) subtly submit to them,
allowing them to win (if you practice martial arts you can feel when someone
fears you a little, how they gives up before actually losing).

4. I think this is significant to point out since it can lead to both positive and
negative aspects. There are two types of power:
• Personalized power is where people want power for selfish reasons.
They want to dominate for the sake of it.
• Socialized power is where people want power to be able to influence a
social cause, like saving the whales. Its purpose it not to dominate other
people.
Personalized power is where power gets its bad rep, like being dictatorial,
while with socialized power it gets a positive connotation, such as
democracy. The winner effect can change people from being powerless and
insecure into one of both extremes. I believe we can all agree that, ideally, we
want people to become more confident to carry out projects that benefit
society (socialized) rather than promoting personal gains through
personalized power.
Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer writes in his book Power: Why
Some People Have It and Others Don’t that, in order to succeed in your
career, you must have both needs for power. On one hand, you need the
selfish drive for self-improvement and dominance, on the other, you must
also want to improve your society so that people want to follow you. People
with only S power and no P power do not get ahead in life.
The winner effect can make one’s power go to their head. Coates talks about
how high testosterone and dopamine are a predictor of success in the stock
market, but if the winner effect in your brain is too strong, you start making
stupid decisions (failure grounds us to reality). Ian H. Roberts quotes Pablo
Picasso talking to his adult son and disclosing himself as someone with too
much personalized power:
“You’re incapable of looking after your children! You are incapable
of making a living! You’re mediocre. You are wasting my time. I am
El Rey, the King. And you – you are my thing.”
Picasso may not have been the nicest man, but the winner effect in
power-balanced individuals (with both P and S power) will have positive
effects. It can encourage people to become confident and try to make positive
changes for themselves and their loved ones.

5. Designing for the winner effect seems like a natural add-on to gamification,
since it comes along with the fun mechanics that we all love. Winner and
loser effects are happening all the time, so gamification systems might
leverage them to our advantage with proper design. Having fun will make
you smarter, more confident and earn you higher profits. Of course, more
research and experiments must be done to create working systems, but the
future seems promising.
“My business is to succeed, and I’m good at it. I create my Iliad by my
actions, create it day by day” – Napoleon Bonaparte