Who wins is what matters. This week, Donna Strickland was hailed as the third ever woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physics. Much of the media coverage talked up the historical significance of Strickland’s gender, showing less interest in the substance of her work (research on laser beams). Of course the relative lack of female Nobel Prize winners is newsworthy, and its discussion positive and necessary. But the story illustrates the point that prizes are seen as the ultimate validation of scientific endeavour. Never mind that you have made a life-changing discovery, a public prize is what ultimately wins most adulation, attention and prestige. Commenting on the science Nobel prizes more generally, the Observer’s Science Editor Robin McKie questions their value: “[C]ritics claim the award is now out of step with modern collaborative research methods”. The prizes, he argues, do not reflect the reality of modern scientific cooperation. Worse, perhaps, they create a false public impression of the value of scientific research.

Some areas of our lives, like sports, are structurally set up for competition. There is an argument that games like football or tennis are pointless without competition. Even recreationally, kicking or knocking the ball around is often only a “warm-up”. Many of us readily accept that a large part of the motivation – and perhaps even fun – will lie in beating our opponent.

Artistic and scientific pursuits are different, however. Learning an instrument or creating works of art are much more intuitively about mastery, individual progression and intrinsic motivation. And whilst we aim to please others through performances or exhibitions as we progress, unlike sports tournaments, high accomplishment is not a zero sum game. In theory, there is no limit to the films, plays, exhibtions or albums that can be awarded five stars. And yet, as for science, in many artistic and creative fields, the greatest mark of accomplishment is a public prize. The Turner Prize, the Brits, the Baftas, the Booker, the Stirling Prize for architecture – they all work on the principle that the greatest achievement is to beat others. As a society, we have invented competition where there needn’t be any. Who wins is what counts.

Not everyone is happy and arts prizes in particular are not short of criticism. “Tracey Emin paints ugly picture of Turner prize as flawed and unjust”, “The Emmy nomination process is completely insane”, “And the loser is … why everyone is sick of award shows” are some of the – fairly typical – headlines. Guardian writer Jason Cowley has argued that our prize-giving culture “has replaced the art of criticism in determining cultural value and shaping public taste”. In our frenzied lives, we are grateful for these shortcuts that tell us what to like and value. Thus subjective appraisal by a handful of judges leads to enhanced market value, making a mockery of economic notions of rational individual preferences. We no longer know how to develop our own tastes, our capacity for criticism and engagement with art. We forget why we should value scientific research, music, art and literature. In our rush to categorise and rank our world, we forget that in their different ways, these creative endeavours can all enhance individual and collective wellbeing.

What about the scientist’s or artist’s motivation? Won’t they be more motivated and work harder if they are competing for a prize? It is true that, in the short term, competition against others can focus the mind. But studies across numerous fields, including academic settings and other work places, have identified a negative correlation between competitiveness and achievement, such as number of citations. One study of seven-to-eleven year old girls compared artistic output from a group competing for prizes, and another group who were not. Seven independent artists judged the competitive works of art to be less creative (e.g. less complex and varied) than the non-competitive works. For the same reasons, music competitions have been criticised as creating adverse conditions for outstanding performances, where mental stamina is more important than artistic aptitude. Competition encourages conformity and inhibits risk taking and, therefore, creativity.(1)

Having reviewed 135 major science and technology innovations, science author Steven Johnson suggests: “When one looks at the innovation in nature and in culture, environments that build walls around good ideas tend to be less innovative in the long run than are open-ended environments. Good ideas … want to connect, fuse, recombine. They want to reinvent themselves by crossing borders.” (3) And, argues Harvard psychologist Teresa Amabile, “creativity flourishes when an individual is allowed to pursue a subject about which he or she cares passionately in an environment that feels more like play than work”. As composer Bela Bartok once said, “Competitions are for horses, not artists”.(2)

Whether in science, the arts or even – as I have argued – sports, the pursuit of excellence is served less by an obsession with competition, prizes and awards, and more by collaboration on the one hand, and individual – often playful – pursuit of mastery on the other.

Notes:

(1) See Kohn, Alfie (1992). “No Contest. The Case Against Competition.” Houghton Mifflin, New York. Chapter 3.

(2) Kohn, Alfie (1992), citing Carl Battaglia, “Piano Competitions: Talent Hunt or Sport?” p.31.

(3) Johnson S. 2010. Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation. Penguin, New York, NY.

(4) Amabile TM. 1996. Creativity in context. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.