Americans are natural underdogs

The nytimes has an interesting finding about our character. We work harder when we are a close second compared to other circumstances. This shows that the truly great among us are those who can take an advantage and make it even stronger, and those who can turn a severe disadvantage into a better circumstance.

Here’s my favorite new fact about N.C.A.A. basketball: teams that are behind by one point at halftime are actually more likely to win than teams that are one point ahead.
...
But how can we tell whether this is the losing team working harder, or the halftime leader easing up?
Here, they move from field evidence to the Wharton behavioral lab, setting up a very simple experiment in which their subjects were challenged to a trivial task — how many times they could type “a” then “b” in half a minute. The subjects were told that if they beat their opponent, they would get a bigger payout. After the first round of competition, some were given feedback, and others weren’t. And here’s the key to the experiment: they randomly told some folks that they were a long way behind their opponent, others were told they were a little bit behind, or exactly tied, a little ahead, or even a long way ahead. Those who were randomly told they were a little bit behind improved their performance dramatically, while the other groups improved by about the same amount as the control condition (that is, the same improvement as those given no feedback at all).
It’s an intriguing finding: being behind by a little yields the greatest possible effort. And while these researchers measure these effects on the basketball court, or on pounding keyboards, their implications for the rest of our lives are even more intriguing. Want your workers to work harder? Tell them that they are running a close second in the race for promotion.