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Sometimes, a sticker isn’t just a sticker.
Heading into the 1967 season, Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes dumped his program’s red helmets and brought in the now-iconic silver headgear. With the new garb, Hayes instituted a new policy: Individual players’ contributions — those that helped the team win but might otherwise go unnoticed by traditional statistics, like a key block on a touchdown run — would be rewarded with a small buckeye leaf sticker. (It’s now trademarked by the university.)
What were they supposed to do with these decals? Hayes instructed his players to affix them to the shiny metallic backsides of their new helmets.
What seemed like a simple nod of recognition has now become a time-honored tradition. In all, 22 Division I FBS teams currently use helmet-sticker rewards. Yet these decorations are much more than small tokens of thanks. They embody a rite of passage, with a player’s status among his teammates measured by how heavily adorned in stickers his helmet becomes during the course of a season.
Now, a study published this month in the online journal PLoS ONE, has given a fresh perspective on this practice: When small rewards become visible trophies of status within a group, male players change their approach in competition, sacrificing their own best interest to serve the needs of the team.
If these results extrapolate to competitive sports, it’s possible that helmet stickers could be subconsciously driving players toward team behavior through deeply rooted psychological mechanisms.
In the PLoS One study, Xiaofei Sophia Pan, a doctoral candidate in economics in Daniel Houser’s lab at the Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, or ICES at George Mason University in Virginia, designed a few experiments to determine how a group of college students valued certain prizes, and how that value changed during competition.
When a reward was offered during the experiment, the prizes were always small, either a Haagen-Dazs ice cream bar or a unique mug with the ICES logo that was not available for purchase at the campus store. By first asking a subset of male and female participants how much they would be willing to pay for each prize, Pan made sure the group didn’t have an inherent bias toward one of the rewards. And at first blush, the group valued them the same.
The remainder of the volunteers was then divvied up into four-person teams, and each participant was given $20 at the start of the game. For 10 rounds, players had to decide how much of their experimental money to contribute to the team’s communal pot. For every $1 contributed to the group, each team member received 40 cents on the dollar at the end of the study.
The game was all about reading one’s opponents, as cooperation only paid off if everyone on the team followed suit. So if all the players kept their money in hand, there would be no communal funds to split, while if everyone went all-in, each player would end up with $32 — a $12 return on investment.
When a round was over, players saw anonymous results of how much money the other members of the team had contributed. and could adjust their strategy if they desired. Also, the participants rated their teammates, on a scale from zero to 10, according to how much they approved of their teammates’ contributions.
The higher the number, the higher their opinion of that person (at least in theory). And the more points that players accrued from their teammates’ ratings, the more likely they were to win the prize.
Before the game began, the players knew which prize was at stake — the mug or the ice cream bar — or whether they were in a “no prize” control experiment. Regardless of which piece of swag was being offered that period, prizes were always privately awarded. But the researchers required those who won the ice cream bar to finish eating it before they returned to the rest of the group.
The mug winners, on the other hand, carried their spoils back to the experiment room before the next testing round began. Though none of the participants spoke to each other, the mug revealed the game’s finest team player to the rest of the group.
The researchers found that when the mug was the prize, the men in the group — but not the women — fought harder to win, so they more readily threw in all their cash during the game, vying for the highest possible ratings from their teammates. And when competing for the mug, the males cooperated more with each other, instead of plotting and scheming against the rest of the group.
Pan thinks the findings show that the males viewed the mug as a displayable trophy to the rest of the group, and their desire to win the affection of their peers spurred them to shift their behavior away from self-interest toward a strategy that was better aligned for team success.
A breakdown of stars won by males and females in both the ice cream and mug games.Pan likens the results of this study to anthropological findings about humans. From a survivalist point of view, it would be in a person’s best interest to fend for himself or herself. Yet evidence supports the idea that altruistic behavior can indeed benefit a species, particularly when the selfless deeds are reciprocated. But as Pan pointed out to Wired.com, in contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, “people continued to share even without getting anything [tangible] in return.”
But what they did earn, Pan continues, was “respect and status” among peers. For those carrying a Y-chromosome, an elevated status might boost their chances to reproduce with the group’s females, as well as make other male adversaries think twice about challenging them.
In essence, reputation may help to develop and retain the “alpha male” distinction, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing, since the alpha’s actions may ultimately benefit the group. As Houser told Wired.com, “It’s exciting to discover that competitive impulses, which can sometimes have negative social connotations, also have this very positive upside potential. One wonders if it might be possible to direct the energy from other human drives towards making the world a better place.”
Tens of thousands of years ago, Pan guesses, hunters may have kept a tusk or skin from the animal they killed as a trophy. Helmet stickers may well be the modern-day manifestation of males’ innate desire to mark their status, explaining why the tradition is so valued in team sports like football.
Clearly, a fullback laying out his body to take a punishing hit from a linebacker 30 pounds heavier than him is not in his best interest. Yet it will benefit the team immensely as his tailback scoots to the end zone unscathed.
Even still, nice as the sticker may be, it’d be hard to believe that the fullback is solely after a novelty that’s traditionally popular with small children. But one key point that Pan and Houser have shown is that the value of rewards — even small ones — changes dramatically once status and competition are factored in. Stickers aren’t the only factor driving team spirit, but small rewards that boost status seem to blur the lines we typically define between ego and team play.
That said, truly extrapolating these findings to college football may go out the window, if the Buckeye leaves ever go the scratch-and-sniff route.
Citation: Pan XS, Houser D, 2011 Competition for Trophies Triggers Male Generosity. PLoS ONE 6(4): e18050. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018050
Image: buckeye50.com
Ideal for all electronic
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Wipeout Pure, the latest edition to the popular racing series for the PSP handheld entertainment system, provides an intense, combat racing experience as players choose from five different speed classes and race relentlessly around 16 futuristic, racing tracks. During both single and multi-player gameplay, racing fans will be able to enjoy challenging, action-packed gameplay modes that include Single Race, Tournament, Time Trial, Free Play and Zone Mode (single-player only). Supporting up to eight players via a Wi-Fi link for multiplayer gameplay, gamers will be able to take on their friends and attempt to blast enemy ships to pieces in a fierce competition for top racing honors. Fresh downloadable content that can be saved to a Memory Stick Duo will be made available after launch to expand the racing experience and allow for personalization of the game Media - UMD
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The Good Wife is a compelling drama about Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), a strong, articulate woman whose life has been turned upside down by the actions of her husband Peter Florrick (Chris Noth), a state's attorney who's been disgraced by a sex scandal and imprisoned for abusing his position in office. The series begins with a press conference in which Peter apologizes for his personal indiscretions and denies any professional wrongdoing, but the focus of this series is all on Alicia--how she endures the moment in front of the press, the personal impact of the experience just after the cameras are turned off, and how that instant in time will affect every aspect of her life from that moment on. A middle-aged woman accustomed to charity events and luxury in the suburbs, Alicia is suddenly forced to abandon her old life, move to an apartment in the city, and reenter the workforce as a junior associate in a local law firm in order to support herself and her two teenage children. Add in the extra baggage of the very public sex scandal, competition from a young and highly ambitious twentysomething lawyer (Matt Czuchry) at the firm, and a coworker (Archie Panjabi) whom her husband once fired, and things become really tricky for Alicia. The story is about much more than Alicia's reentry into the courtroom; it's about how everything in her life has changed and how every decision she makes impacts her future. Excellent writing and the powerful performances of Margulies and her costars make this series absolutely captivating. The blend of personal drama, courtroom action, sexual indiscretion, family dynamics, and political scandal is perfectly balanced and, as in real life, everything is complexly interwoven. The most compelling thing about the series is Margulies herself: she is completely believable as Alicia Florrick--everything she feels and thinks comes across as totally real to viewers, sometimes without even one word of dialogue, and viewers can't help but relate to everything she's going through and wonder what they might do in a similar situation. Viewers struggle right along with Alicia as she oscillates between self-confidence and self-doubt, resolve and vulnerability, hatred for her husband's infidelity and an inexplicable resilient love for him, even in the face of her renewed attraction to her former law school classmate and now-boss Will (Josh Charles). Viewers share in her determination to remain strong and somehow balance the demands of work and family. Panjabi is commanding in her breakout role as Kalinda, an extremely pragmatic investigator who regularly defies convention and will go to almost any length to get the information she needs, and every interaction between Alicia and Kalinda is simply electric. Christine Baranski is also stellar in her role as Diane Lockhart, a firm partner who sees Alicia both as someone to mentor and as a personal threat. 
To make their apps really compelling, should treat bands as works of art.
Too many bands think they need to have an app. You do not. You need a good website, with up-to-date content, which has an excellent mobile version (the few bands) and data feeds that go in the aforementioned services. This list add a pointless app is at best a waste of time and can be even a source of misinformation if it is not regularly updated.
In 1980, after several years of absence, Paul Simon returned to the concert stage on a triumphant swing through the United States and Europe. Touring with him were some of the best in the business: Steve Gadd on drums, Tony Levin on bass, the late Richard Tee on piano, and the late Erie Gale on guitar. The performance of October 7, 1980 at the Tower Theatre in Philadelphia was one of the focal points on the tour and included an unsurpassed ensemble of musicians. This DVD contains special features such as a biography, discography, photo gallery, motion manuscript gallery and motion menus.
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Lisa is based a wired science post loose in Seattle, Washington.![The Favorite Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley [VHS]](/510857KZHRLSL500.jpg)
Mary-Kate and Ashley combine music and mystery in this series from the mid-1990s in which the girl detectives promise to "solve any crime by dinner time." In the first episode, a phone call from three hayseed miners frightened off the lode by a "monster" sends the girls biking to the rescue. The monster turns out to be a singing scientist in a HAZMAT (hazardous material) suit who gives viewers a small lesson on the origin of magma and pumice. Meanwhile, the girls sing volcanically: "You better run / Don't stand there and gawk / This is one hot, hot rock." Next, it's off to the funhouse when owners Madame Zelda and her brother face financial ruin until the twins reveal the true identity of the ogre who's been terrorizing guests. Finally, a suspected dragon is breaking windows, making scary sounds, and stinking up the well in Dead Gulch. Undaunted, Mary-Kate and Ashley don cowboy boots and ten-gallon hats and head to the Logical I Ranch to follow the geological clues to their logical conclusion. Each program runs about a half-hour, is crammed with songs, fashion, and silliness, and will delight (mostly girls) ages 3 to 7. --Kimberly Heinrichs
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Edward drinker cope was not exactly known for his sunny disposition. A major player in the "Bone wars" of the late 19th century, his long-running feud with other bones sharp Othniel Charles Marsh is scientific legendary. The two former friends changed about everything from fossil sites on the naming rights of extinct creatures, 1890 spill with their embarrassing spat in public view on the New York Herald.
A line drawing of the skull of Labidosaurus (above) and a close-up of the lower jaw of designated CMNH 76876 shows two missing teeth (tp1, tp3) and an abscess. By Reisz et al., 2011.
Brian Switek is a freelance science journalist and researcher at the New Jersey State Museum. He is also author of the book written in stone.
This high quality screwdriver is specially designed to remove the triwing security screws on your Nintendo Wii.
The AS3B is a tri-shelf cable management system. It can be used with or without a Plasma/LCD mount. This unit is designed to fit under your display and provide an on wall solution for other components such as cable boxes, DVD players, game consoles, and stereo components. There are three 2.25" holes on the aluminum plate that allow you to cleanly run your cables up to your TV or down to another component, as well as out the bottom to an outlet. 
The UNIOO i800 from Auzentech is an APPLE certified mobile power source for iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPod, iPod Classic, iPod touch, iPod touch 2G and iPod Nano that you can recharge using a USB cable (cable included).
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# Triwing screwdriver is made specifically for Nintendo Wii