84
THE
MOLECULE OF MORE
THE CHEMISTRY OF FRAUD
I know your noble nature hates the thought of treachery
or fraud. But what a glorious prize is victory!
—Sophocles,
Philoctetes
I like to win, but more than anything, I can’t stand this
idea of losing. Because to me, losing means death.
—Lance
Armstrong
In 1999, after surviving a battle with advanced cancer, Lance Armstrong
won his first Tour de France. A reporter for the New York Times
described
him in a way that would come to be typical in the following years: “a man
of strong will and focus” who “dominated the Tour.” He went on to win
seven consecutive Tour de France races, dominating not only that famous
race, but the sport itself.
Armstrong was legendary for his determination. He preferred to bike
with a headwind because it made the course harder and gave him more
opportunities to outlast the competition. Author Juliet Macur described
Armstrong’s determination with this story: “[A tree] was once on the other
side of [his] property, 50 yards west of his house. Armstrong wanted it at
the front steps. The transplantation cost $200,000. His close friends joke
that Armstrong, who is agnostic, engineered the project to prove he didn’t
need God to move heaven and earth.”
“I think I would probably go crazy if I was 35 or 40 and didn’t have
some competition in my life,” Armstrong said.
In 2012, the world-champion cyclist was stripped of all seven
of his Tour de France titles when it was revealed that he had used
performance-enhancing drugs. Why would this legendary athlete cheat, this
man of steely determination who never gave up, even in the face of cancer?
Oddly enough, he may have cheated because he was so successful.
Dopamine doesn’t come equipped with a conscience. Rather, it is a
source of cunning fed by desire. When it’s revved up, it suppresses
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DOMINATION
feelings of guilt, which is an H&N emotion. It is capable of inspiring
honorable effort, but also deceit and even violence in pursuit of the
things it wants.
Dopamine pursues
more, not
morality;
to dopamine, force and fraud
are nothing more than tools.
Israeli researchers designed an experiment to help them better
understand why people cheat. They set up a pair of games that would
pit one player against another. The first was a guessing game in which
players competed to see who could guess what images were going to
appear on a computer screen. In this game it was impossible to cheat.
The second game was different: the first player rolled a pair of dice,
and announced the results to the second player. The higher the roll,
the more money the first player got, and the less her opponent got. In
this game cheating was not only possible, it was easy. The second player
couldn’t see the actual dice, so the first player could report anything she
liked. The winner and the loser of the first game took turns rolling the
dice and announcing the result.
Because of
the way dice are marked, if everyone was honest, the
average score should have been about seven. The losers of the first game
reported an average roll of a little over six during the second game, which
was consistent with random chance. The winners of the first game, on
the other hand, reported a second-game average of almost nine. Statis-
tical analysis revealed that it was extremely
unlikely that number could
have come about by chance. There was a greater than 99 percent likeli-
hood that the first-game winners cheated on the second game.
For the next phase of the experiment, the researchers changed
things. Instead of a competition, the first game was changed to a
lottery—and the new arrangement yielded a very different outcome.
The players who won the lottery didn’t cheat at all on the second game.
In fact, they appear to have underreported their scores,
resulting in
their opponents sharing the spoils of victory.
The scientists weren’t sure how to explain this result. They thought
that maybe people who won competitions, as opposed to winning by
pure luck, developed a sense of entitlement that allowed them to justify
subsequent cheating. But by thinking about the role dopamine plays
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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
in motivating us to dominate our environment, we can find a better
explanation.
Winning competitions, along with eating and having sex,
is essen-
tial for evolutionary success. In fact, it’s winning competitions that gives
us access to food and reproductive partners. As a result, it’s not surpris-
ing that winning competitions releases dopamine. It’s the rush of plea-
sure we feel when we send the tennis ball flying over the net, get a good
grade on a test, or receive praise from our boss. The surge of dopamine
feels good, but it’s different from a surge of H&N pleasure, which is a
surge of satisfaction. And that difference is key: the dopamine surge
triggered by winning leaves us wanting more.
WINNING TO KEEP FROM LOSING
It’s not enough to win the Tour de France. It’s not enough to win it twice
or even seven times. Winning is never enough.
Nothing is ever enough
for dopamine. It is
the pursuit that matters, and the victory, but there is
no finish line, and never will be. Winning, like drugs, can be addictive.
Yet the pleasurable rush that never satisfies is only half of the equa-
tion. The other half is the dopamine crash that feels so awful.
Every year, physicians in Washington, DC, fill out a ballot in which
they vote for the best doctors in a variety of medical specialties. The
results are published in the
Washingtonian magazine’s famous Top Doc
issue. It’s their best-selling issue. Being named a Top Doc is an honor,
and it feels nice. Your colleagues see it, your friends and family see it,
everybody sees it. After the glow of satisfaction wears off, though, an
uncomfortable question comes up:
Will I make it next year? All the people
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