Competition is a significant part of social interaction in the workplace, on the sports field, and in recreational settings. How we respond to that competition is often portrayed as saying a lot about our character. Being branded as a sore loser at a company picnic or after a game night among friends can carry over into relationships. Children are encouraged to play sports as a way to teach them to work in teams and get experience with winning and losing.

A new study published in PNAS, however, suggests that winning a competition may end up making us behave dishonestly, adding further nuance to the paradigm of the “good sport” and the “sore loser.” The work indicates that winners were more likely to steal money from peers during subsequent interactions, perhaps due to feelings of entitlement. While previous studies have shown that honesty and dishonesty can influence the odds of winning a competition, this study presents new data suggesting that these influences go both ways.

The work started by having some participants play in an object recall contest against other people. Afterward, the winners were more likely to dishonestly claim money from their peers in a dice-rolling, money-focused task. The same held true for participants who were simply asked to recall a time when they had won a competition with other people.

However, this behavior only happened when winning equated to defeating someone else and not when participants were successful in meeting a personal goal. The act of triumphing at someone’s expense may be critical for prompting this behavior.

The authors suspected that this stealing stems from the fact that a sense of entitlement drives dishonesty, a tendency found in previous studies. To probe this hypothesis, the researchers administered a survey to test for feelings of entitlement. Those who were asked to recall winning a competition over others had more feelings of entitlement than participants who were asked to recall achieving a personal goal.

In fact, a winners’ sense of entitlement may be key to understanding this whole behavior pattern. Typically, when people choose to behave dishonestly, they balance their desire for personal gain with their desire to maintain a positive self-image—it may be easier to maintain a positive self-image directly after winning a competition.

Being able to justify dishonesty also plays an important role in the decision to steal. In the case of these participants, enhanced feelings of entitlement could provide justification to engage in a behavior that might otherwise be considered unacceptable.

According to the authors, the literature shows that one additional factor likely influencing behavior after a competition is the participants’ relative ranking before the competition. For example, if a professional tennis player were to win a tennis match against high-school junior varsity tennis player, this would not have the same effect on self-worth and entitlement as a win against a more evenly matched peer. Relative ranking prior to competition is just one of a variety of contextual circumstances that may impact dishonesty post-competition.

Competition is a driving factor in civilization, influencing technological progress, economic growth, personal growth, social mobility, and financial security. Since competition is integral to our interactions, a more complete understanding of its consequences would clearly be informative. If winners of a competition are more likely to be dishonest when it comes to money, then this phenomenon may be contributing to the further stratification of wealth, and mechanisms for curbing it may play a role in ensuring a more just society.

PNAS, 2016. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1515102113 (About DOIs).