Waterstones The Winner Effect

Author: Dr. Tadhg E. MacIntyre

Rating: 5

Review: ???Neuroscientist Ian Robertson has again delved into penning a popular text but this time he has surpassed himself. Previously, he wrote Opening The Mind’s Eye and Mind Sculpture: Unlocking Your Brain's Untapped Potential which appealed to those interested in skill development, recovery and optimising potential. They were high brow explanations of the potential for cognitive changes to support recovery and individual growth. In The Winner Effect he shifts to our social world and provides a neuroscientific account of the rise of power. It is essentially a rough guide to the unrelenting challenges that achieving power entails. Vignettes provide a route for the sceal and the warnings are interspersed like series of road signs on a mountain pass. Thus the book is not so much a handbook but a treatise where the author is an advocate for the power of psychology in understanding our social, political and even our sporting world. Currently Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, he founded the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN) in 2002. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and has published over 250 scientific articles in high impact journals. He champions the field of psychology, both through his blog [...] and via activities with the Science Gallery, Trinity. This advocacy role is not unfamiliar to Ian Robertson who has always been concerned with disseminating the key messages of psychology to an audience beyond the narrow remit of our journal outputs and Department seminars. It is widely recognised that the main challenge for psychology will be to convey its value in providing solutions across an array of societal problems. Increasing scrutiny in the current economic context provides a backdrop in which we need to speak to multiple audiences and more importantly engage in public discourse and advocacy. As the PSI’s Director of Professional Development has eloquently stated: “It never ceases to strike me just how much the discipline of psychology has to offer and how impressively we come across in fora, particularly in terms of our instinctive evidence-based approach and our ability to grapple with and disseminate complex ideas.” Ian Robertson is acutely aware of the role of psychology in understanding contemporary issues. For example, his blog has recently explored some of the acts of Putin, Blair and even BOD (Brian O’Driscoll). His analyses echo the vignettes from The Winner Effect and they are written in lucid prose –a style reminiscent of Christian Jarrett (former writer for The Psychologist). Before we tackle the new text let us reflect upon the role that Ian Robertson has undertaken. Is it simply public engagement? A valuable role in itself, it may enrich the audiences knowledge and act as a form of myth busting for our discipline. Or is it advocacy for the discipline of psychology, which after over a Century of science has still not realised its potential. Our field is still somewhat like Walden Two by B. F. Skinner, a utopia that makes for interesting reading but a discipline that certainly in Ireland has been slow to gain traction in both policy and practice. There has been a long tradition of advocacy among great thinkers within the field of psychology. For instance, among the top 10 most influential psychologists of all time, three of them, Abraham Maslow, Albert Bandura and Carl Rogers have been past-Presidents of APA (Hagbloom et al., 2002). Other APA leaders have included William James and more ?recently Alan Kazdin, Diane Halpern, Richard Suinn, Robert Sternberg and Martin Seligman have all held this mantle. It appears that advocacy has been coupled with brilliance in the emergence of our scientific discipline. And now let us return to The Winner Effect by Ian H. Robertson. Evidence emerging from the biological sciences suggests that when an animal beats a weaker opponent it “gets on a roll” and is this enhances its abilty to defeat a stronger opponent. Termed the “winner effect,” it is a result of a hormonal response to the initial success. Animals who win are primed to continue to prevail. The place of mankind within the animal king is subject to debate but this biological effect transcends our distinctive human characteristics. The book answers whether there is such a thing as a naturally born winner? What factors enable a rise to power? How does power change us? And if some of the biological implications of acquiring power are more Mr. Hyde than Dr. Jekyll, how can we avoid these negative consequences? The vignettes in the book provide an illuminating backdrop to the research largely drawn from the 25 years of neuroscience and more recently, the field of social cognition. Could we predict that Oscar winners would live an average of four years longer than nominees? Or did you expect that the colour of the jersey facilitates Olympic athletes to win more often? Six chapters in the book outline a range of underlying assumptions which are subsequently probed by a series of questions. For example, in the first chapter “The mystery of Picasso’s son,” the question of why did Pablo Picasso’s son did not achieve the greatness of his father is posed. The phenomenon of hiding the ladder is identified and the process of mis-attribution is among those employed to explain the challenge of following in the footsteps of parental greatness. Perhaps a case of the emperor being naked until luck or hard work enabled them to convert effort into success, but their attribution may mistakingly focus on their destiny and talent, leaving their offspring with no roadmap for success. This idea of genetic fatalism resonates throughout the book and lessons from positive psychology, neuroscience and social cognition are intertwined in a seamless narrative. Self-limiting behaviours demonstrate that people often put glass ceilings on their own ability to live up to (inaccurate) societal expectations. Enron provides a clear example of “vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself” and perhaps we don’t even have to look across the pond for such striking examples. Arguably the strongest argument in the book is that power can seduce us, just like money and sex. The products of gaining power go beyond the trapping of wealth and influence and a democrat can quickly become an autocrat (Maybe even a Republican). Other challenges are consistent and predictable and myopia appears to be a consistent challenge for those climbing the ladder to sucesss. Keeping one another in check (e.g., peer mentoring) and maintaining contact with your social group (e.g., keeping grounded) can prevent some of the perils of self-destructive goal pursuit. Distinctions are made between the distinct power types (p-power is power need for personal goals and s-power is for group/institution goals). Not surprisingly, people who score high on the p-power index are hungry for the next thrill–which makes them more likely to be engage in risk taking behaviours than people with a high s-power index. Finally, if you read this book it will change your televisual habits. Breaking Bad, Love/Hate and House of Cards and Revenge all show examples of the challenges of chasing power. When Jesse Pinkman says to Walt “Are we in the meth business, or the money business?” you know the school teacher has lost the plot. And now you know a little of the why too. Winners must be careful not to fall victim to their own success but this text shows that psychology is the real winner.

Author: Antons Taukac

Rating: 2

Review: The book does propose an interesting perspective on how power influences decisions and personality of an individual. However, the way the author writes about it makes it really tedious to read: jumping back and forth between stories without coming to that final rewarding conclusion that made you pick up the book in the first place (at least in my case). I agree with other reviews that the book should be halved in size which would make it much better.