The Molecule of More

Remember the Titans, 
Rudy, The Bad News Bears, A League of Their Own, Rocky, 
Hoop Dreams, The Karate Kid.
But the question remains: 
How does a player or a team demonstrably inferior in skill 
and ability prevail over a superior opponent? It happens too 
often to attribute it only to luck. The answer is self-efficacy. 
One of the most dramatic examples of self-efficacy in sports 
took place on January 3, 1993, in an NFL playoff game fans 
call simply “The Comeback.”
In the third quarter, the Buffalo Bills were down 35–3 
against the Houston Oilers. Bills fans were filing through the 
exits as a Houston radio announcer commented that although 
the lights had been on in the stadium since morning, “you 
could pretty much turn them out on the Bills right now.”
But as the clock wound down, things began to change. 
Luck played some role—a bad kick, a dubious call that went 
in the Bills’ favor—but even that does not account for the 
burst of success the team experienced. As their comeback 
began, the Bills scored 21 points in 10 minutes. A player 
recalled later, “We were scoring at will.” As the Oilers proved 
unable to stop them, a Bills player on the sidelines began 

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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
to shout, “They don’t want it! They don’t want it!” Buffalo’s 
will—their belief that they were destined to prevail, their 
self-efficacy
—was stronger that day than their opponents’ 
skills and abilities. The Bills sent the game into overtime and 
won on a 32-yard field goal, 41–38. This victory would be the 
greatest point-deficit comeback in NFL history.
Of note: Bills star quarterback Jim Kelly had been 
injured the previous week and was replaced in the Oilers 
game by his backup, Frank Reich. At that time, Reich held 
the record for the biggest comeback in college football his-
tory. A decade earlier he had led the Maryland Terrapins 
from a first-half deficit of 31–0 to a 42–40 win over the unde-
feated Miami Hurricanes. Four years after the Bills’ victory 
over the Oilers, the team, led by quarterback Todd Collins, 
would come back from a 26-point deficit to defeat the Indi-
anapolis Colts, setting the second-highest point record for 
a regular-season comeback. The self-efficacy of the Buffalo 
Bills seemed to propagate itself. Success inspired confi-
dence; confidence produced success.
WHAT IF YOU TRIED BEING NICE? 
James was referred to treatment by his employer after he threw a stapler 
across the room in a fit of rage. He was a middle-aged man who had risen 
through the ranks to become a vice president at a large company. He was 
not liked and the only reason for his success was his determination and hard 
work. He told the therapist that he would have been fired long ago if had 
he not made himself such a valuable asset. The problem was that he was 
always angry.
He had been abused as a child and had never come to terms with what 
had happened. He never told anyone about it, and persuaded himself that 
it didn’t matter because it had happened so long ago. He had been divorced 

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DOMINATION
twice, and by this time he had given up on relationships, devoting himself
entirely to his work.
His anger had become progressively worse over the years. On one occa-
sion he was ejected from a grocery store for screaming obscenities at a woman 
who had bumped his shopping cart, and on another he was arrested after 
shoving a taxi driver during a disagreement over the fare. The charges had 
been dropped, and James maintained he had been fully justified in what he 
did. Now, however, he was worried. His job meant everything to him, and 
he was willing to do anything to keep it, even confront his past.
James had little emotional resiliency and his therapist worried that 
digging into the trauma would activate disturbing emotions and make his 
behavior worse before it got better. So before they began to explore the past, 
they talked about ways to make the present a little less stressful. The ther-
apist wanted to find a way to reduce the constant conflict James had with 
pretty much everyone he met. So she taught James to be manipulative.
It would be a long time before James could trust anyone, but he wasn’t 
stupid. He quickly learned that he could get his way more easily by smiling 
at people instead of glaring at them. He began to greet his coworkers in the 
morning, not because he cared about them, but because it made it easier to 
get them to finish projects on time. He ordered pizza for his team when they 
had to work late and complimented people on their appearance. He became 
a master manipulator.
And he enjoyed it. He liked the new source of power he had found, but 
he also liked the smiles he got back. A turning point occurred when one of
the administrative assistants burst into his office in tears, telling him that 
someone had opened a credit card account in her name and now she was 
being threatened by a collections agency. She had chosen him for comfort and 
advice. Later that week he and his therapist began to talk about his past.
So far we have focused on domination as primarily a solo pursuit, but 
we cannot achieve every goal by ourselves. Consider domination that 
requires working with other people.
A relationship that is formed for the purpose of accomplishing a 
goal is called agentic, and it is orchestrated by dopamine. The other per-
son acts as an extension of you, an agent who assists you in achieving 

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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
your goal. For example, relationships we make at networking events are 
primarily agentic, and typically result in mutual gain. Affiliative relation-
ships, on the other hand, are for the purpose of enjoying social interac-
tions. The simple pleasure of being with another person, experienced 
in the here and now, is associated with H&N neurotransmitters such as 
oxytocin, vasopressin, endorphin, and endocannabinoids.
Most relationships have both affiliative and agentic elements. 
Friends who like to hang out together in the here and now (affiliative) 
may also work on future projects together, such as planning a white-
water rafting trip or an evening at the clubs (agentic). Coworkers with 
primarily agentic relationships usually enjoy each other’s company. 
Some people are more comfortable in agentic relationships because 
they’re more structured, while others prefer affiliative relationships 
because they find them more fun. Some people are comfortable with 
both, others with neither.
There are personality types for each variety of relationship prefer-
ence. Agentic people tend to be cool and distant. Affiliative people are 
affectionate and warm. They are also social, and turn to others for sup-
port. People who are good at both affiliative and agentic relationships 
are friendly, accessible leaders, such as Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. 
Those who are less able to navigate agentic relationships are more likely 
to be friendly, accessible followers. Those who have trouble with affilia-
tive relationships but who are skilled with agentic ones may be viewed 
as cold and uncaring, whereas those who are poor at both come across 
as aloof and isolated.
Agentic relationships are established for the purpose of dominat-
ing one’s environment to extract as much as possible from the avail-
able resources, the domain of control dopamine. Although we think 
of domination as an active, even aggressive, activity, it doesn’t have to 
be. Dopamine doesn’t care how something is obtained. It just wants to 
get what it wants. So an agentic relationship can be entirely passive; 
for example, when a manager running an employee meeting gets the 
outcome he wants by keeping quiet.
Agentic relationships can easily become exploitative, such as when 
a scientist enrolls participants in a dangerous experiment without 

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DOMINATION
telling them the risks, or when an employer hires someone under false 
pretenses to exploit her hard work. But an agentic relationship can be 
beautifully humane, too. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American poet, 
wrote: “Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every 
man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”
No matter how ignorant, degraded, or foolish a man is, there is 
something he knows, something he has mastered, that Emerson val-
ued. Emerson sought to find intellectual worth in all people, regardless 
of their station in life. Such a relationship is agentic because the rela-
tionship is about gain—gaining knowledge. It’s not about the H&N 
pleasure of having company. What makes this dopaminergic quotation