#17. Play, Contest, and Games: What Are the Differences?

Play and contest have very different biological roots but merge in human games.

In our everyday language we do not sufficiently distinguish between play and contest. We put our children into contests, and we call them play. We think we are providing children with an opportunity to play when we are not.

One of the defining characteristics of play is it is activity conducted for its own sake, not for some reward outside of itself (see Letter #2). Contest, in contrast, is activity in which two or more individuals or teams compete for some prize, which might be material (e.g., money or a trophy) or social (e.g., increased status in others’ eyes). In nonhuman animals, the distinction between play and contest is clear, but in us humans the two are often confounded. In this letter my goal is to clarify the difference between play and contest and describe their blending in competitive games.

The Distinction Between Play and Contest in Animals

Social play in animals is cooperative and non-competitive. In young mammals it serves the evolutionary function of practicing life-promoting skills, and in both young and older mammals it serves the function of social bonding (see Letter #3). When two animals play together, they must take pains not to hurt or frighten the other, because if they do the play ends. A major goal of all social play is to keep the play going, and to do that it is necessary to keep all the players happy.

Some animal play may look aggressive from a distance, but a closer view shows it is not. Young mammals of many species playfully chase one another and wrestle, but none of that is oriented toward defeating the other. In fact, close inspection shows that animals at play deliberately avoid actions that could turn the friendly encounter into an agonistic one. In play fights, the stronger of the two self-handicaps and no animal pins the other long enough to provide any sense of victory or defeat. In play chases the players take turns being the pursuer and the pursued, and in play fights they take turns adopting the on-top versus underneath positions (Pellis, 2002). The playful nip is never delivered as a hurtful bite (Bekoff 2001, 2004).

Animals assiduously avoid showing signals of aggression during play. Instead, they repeatedly exchange play signals. For monkeys and apes the basic play signal is the smiling or laughing "play face;" for dogs, wolves, foxes, and other canids it is the "play bow," in which the animal lowers its front quarters (accompanied by tail wagging in dogs). These signals are, essentially, signs of non-aggression. If one animal is accidentally hurt in play, the other exhibits a spate of play signals to indicate that the hurt was not intended (Bekoff, 2001)

Animal behaviorists distinguish sharply between play fighting and ritualized fighting in animals. While the former is cooperative, the latter is agonistic. Ritualized fighting is a variety of actual fighting that is conducted in such a way as to reduce the chance that either party will be physically wounded (Hardy & Briffa, 2013; Reichert & Quinn, 2017). It is, essentially, a nonviolent means of establishing which animal would likely win if the encounter were violent. It is aimed at determining who is stronger, braver, or more skilled. The combatants are most often males, and the prize, depending on species and situation, may be the opportunity to mate with a female who is looking on and is motivated to mate with the winner (so she can produce sons who can win such contests). Or, more generally, the prize may be movement up a dominance hierarchy, which itself may have many rewards, including increased opportunities to mate in the future.

In contrast to the joyful frolicking of play fighting, ritualized fighting is grim. It is characterized not by play signals, but by serious signals of aggression. Cats arch their backs, raise their fur, and hiss at one another; antelope paw the ground while staring menacingly at one another and may also test one another’s strength by butting heads or dueling with their antlers; macaque monkeys stare and screech at one another; gorillas puff themselves up and pound their chests. If these tactics fail to establish a clear winner and loser--that is, if neither participant is sufficiently intimidated to back down--the ritualized fight may turn into an actual, violent fight, which ends only when one runs away or goes into a submissive posture, which is a nonverbal way of saying, "I lose, I am humiliated, I am unworthy of mating, I will no longer contest your superiority." Quite literally, in such contests, the level of circulating testosterone goes up in the winner and down in the loser, regardless of whether any actual violence occurred. Aggression and sex are closely related in most mammals.

The Merging of Play and Contest in Our Competitive Human Society

Among humans, contest and play can merge in competitive games, that is, games in which the goal is to defeat an opponent. Such games include most sports, board games, and card games and some computer games. Depending on the players’ attitudes and the rewards (or lack of rewards) for winning, games designed to be competitive can vary along the whole continuum from pure play at one end to pure contest at the other. They are pure play when the players strive to perform well, for the fun of performing well, but don’t bother to keep score because nobody cares who wins. They are also pure play or nearly so when a score is kept and striving to win is viewed simply as an enjoyable aspect of the game, not as anything that has consequences beyond the game itself. However, when trophies or other prizes are added to the scene, or when spectators are added who will judge winners more favorably and losers less favorably, or when the players measure themselves by whether they win or lose, the games become less playful. At the extreme, where winning is all-important, the games are pure contests, not play at all.

The addition of female cheerleaders to male sports in schools seems to be almost explicitly designed to mimic the situation present during ritualized and actual fighting in animals, where males battle it out to win the favors of females. And, at a gut level, the link to sex seems to be present in all serious competitive games, at least for males. Among post-pubertal boys and men, testosterone level goes up in winners and down in losers--just as it does for animals engaged in ritualized fights. That's true not just for physical sports, such as football or soccer, but also for board games such as chess (Archer, 2006).

Final Thoughts

In our society it is hard to be against competition. Competition ranks high in our society's hierarchy of values. But cooperation also ranks high; and, let's face it, competition and cooperation are opposites.

I, like so many people in our society, have mixed feelings about competitive games. I can't get myself to be completely against them. I do, however, think we have gone way overboard in pushing children into competitions and reducing their opportunities for fully non-competitive play--the kind of play they themselves most often choose when adults are not around. For a discussion of the lessons learned by children when they organize their own baseball game and play for fun, versus those they learn when adults organize the game for them and records are kept of wins and losses, see Letter #9. I believe children would be happier and, ultimately, we would have a more peaceful society if we allowed children much more opportunity to create their own games for fun and stopped promoting competition. I will pursue this idea more fully in a future letter.

When you sit down for a family game, are you playing, competing, or both? When is it most fun? Often, two family members have quite different attitudes about the game they are playing. One is intent on winning, the other sees it as a fun social experience and cares little about winning, and both are frustrated by the other’s attitude. “Why can’t you take the game seriously?” “Why can’t you just relax and have fun?”

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References

Archer, J. (2006). Testosterone and human aggression: An evaluation of the challenge hypothesis. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 30, 319-345.

Bekoff, M. (2001). Social play behavior: Cooperation, fairness, trust, and the evolution of morality. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8, 81-90.

Bekoff, M. (2004). Wild Justice and fair play: Cooperation, forgiveness, and morality in animals. Biology and Philosophy, /9,489-520.

Hardy, I.C.W., & Briffa, M., eds. (2013) Animal Contests, Cambridge University Press.

Pellis, S. M. (2002). Keeping in touch: Play fighting and social knowledge. In M. Bekoff C. Allen, & & G. M. Burghardt (Eds.}, The cognitive anima!: Empirical and theoretical perspectives on animal cognition (pp. 421--427). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Reichert, M. S., & Quinn, J. L. (2017). Cognition in contests: Mechanisms, ecology, and evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 32, 773-785.