The fire of competitiveness doesn't dwindle after age 25 along with brain mass and steroid levels, it appears.
Psychologists had 543 men and women in
a mall, ages 25 to 75, take a test that involved quickly evaluating
whether a series of arithmetic problems had been properly solved.
Participants had the choice of being compensated 25 cents per correct
answer or getting 50 cents per answer if they beat the score of a
randomly chosen fellow participant—but nothing if they lost.
As expected, the researchers found
that men were more competitive than women—a pattern unaffected by
age—and that the gap couldn't be explained by ability. Just over half of
the men chose the competition track, versus just over a third of the
women. But for both sexes, the will to compete climbed from the youngest
ages up to 50, when it finally began to decline.
The authors urged more studies, to nail down whether the pattern was general or limited to generations living today.
"Competitiveness Across the Life Span: The Feisty
Fifties," Ulrich Mayr, Dave Wozniak, Casey Davidson, David Kuhns and
William T. Harbaugh, Psychology and Aging (forthcoming)
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