NON PSICOLOGICA

Sito di contenuti sul funzionamento

della mente umana

                                     Competitiveness in Behavior

The Mechanics of Relational Hijacking, Status Arenas, and the Illusion of Self-Affirmation

(By Alberto Bonizzato – Behavioral Coach)

Unlike professional, market, and sporting activities, competitiveness within human relationships always pursues an individual, self-referential objective. Individuals are rarely cognizant of how frequently and automatically this dynamic is activated. Competition, which is widely celebrated as a positive vector for personal and collective growth, actually contains severe structural deviations that trigger profound pathologies within human interactions.

To map this phenomenon, we must first establish that the very concept of "competition" mandates a mathematical binary: a winner and a loser. Operating from this baseline, it becomes clear that the trajectory of any competitive relationship inevitably preludes acute disappointment; it is merely a matter of time. During a competitive interaction, an individual's system experiences homeostatic satisfaction only if they win; if they lose, the metabolic return is profoundly negative. Within personal relationships, it is virtually impossible to forecast who will prevail, particularly since these competitive dynamics operate entirely below the threshold of conscious awareness.

Interactive Competition Between Individuals

Within interpersonal mechanics, competition is defined as any behavioral or communication schema wherein at least two individuals attempt to structurally prevail over one another. This competitive drive activates across thoughts, ideas, interpretations of reality, logical formulations, and moralistic views of societal right and wrong.

Frequently, these competitive dynamics remain entirely locked within our cognitive thoughts, never crossing our lips. Competitive dynamics are fundamentally non-conscious; it is extraordinarily rare for a subject to detect them without specialized technical training.

What, then, distinguishes structural competition from the simple, mature exchange of thought?

The primary line of demarcation resides in the quality of the listening profile and the genuine interest directed toward understanding the other's cognitive data. Between non-competitive individuals, the operational intent is mutual comprehension and the expansion of one’s own viewpoint, typically achieved through proactive deepening or specific inquiry.

Conversely, the competitor does not listen to the interlocutor's data; they experience a frantic urgency to execute their own cognitive file, routinely deploying linguistic formulas of negation aimed at dismantling the opponent's premise. There is zero attempt to integrate or deepen; the overarching posture is a pure drive to prevail.

In advanced stages, competitors challenge each other by demanding that the other "prove" their claims. This is not an attitude of comprehension, but a hostile pre-evaluation executed with the precise intent of dismantling the opponent, completely independent of the actual factual content.

Automated Linguistic Negations

Individuals calibrated to chronic competition systematically initiate sentences with formulaic auto-negations such as:

・ "No..."

・ "No, but..."

・ "Yes, but..."

These automated scripts signal immediately that the system has already rejected the incoming data.

                        [INCOMING COGNITIVE DATA]

                                      │

                                      ▼

                          [COMPETITIVE AUTO-FILTER]

                                      │    

             ┌────────────────────────┴────────────────────────┐

             ▼                                                 ▼

[LIFTING THE INTERLOCUTOR]                         [AUTOMATED NEGATION FILES]

(Forced Proofs / Pre-Evaluation)                 ("No...", "No, but...", "Yes, but...")

             │                                                 │

             └────────────────────────┬────────────────────────┘

                                      ▼

                         [SYSTEMIC RELATION NEGATION]

                      (Establishing Top/Bottom Hierarchy)

Another variation of this mechanic can be observed in the automated negations embedded within couple dynamics, where one partner, entirely at random, takes it for granted that their specific vision is the only correct one, completely bypassing the consultation of the other. These implicit negations anchor themselves upon a visceral necessity to prevail, irrespective of how valid or logical the underlying cognitive justification appears.

To state it plainly, a competitive dynamism is active whenever there is a complete absence of authentic intention to exchange perspectives.

This mechanic is highly visible, for example, within peer groups engaging in banter or joking. There, we observe rapid volleys of punchlines where each participant is driven by a frantic compulsion to display their own cognitive acuity, outshining the intellect of the others. These behavioral sequences are entirely non-conscious; they ignite spontaneously, and the subjects remain completely oblivious to the operational dynamic taking place.

Hierarchical Traps and the Disparity of the Matrix

The moment a relationship mutates into a competitive arena, negatory dynamics trigger automatically. Two subjects interacting competitively will mechanically attempt to construct a strict vertical hierarchy, defining who sits on top and who is placed below, who wins and who loses, who holds the "truth" and who is in error.

This dynamism is culturally validated as long as the analysis remains confined to purely conceptual and intellectual parameters. However, competition assumes vastly different, destructive meanings when executed within the fine mechanics of attention dynamics, power balances, and primary affectivity.

When competitiveness remains ideally restricted to the cognitive plane of information processing, it might be classified as a functional behavior, as it tends to rigorously stress-test the validity of the shared data. Thus, the positive value of competitiveness becomes objective when deployed specifically to debunk myths and isolate structural errors.

However, this optimization completely disintegrates the moment an individual is subjected to a competitive dynamic within an unequal framework (unequal condition). This non-conscious or inescapable disparity converts into a deeply humiliating mechanism for the submissive subject, who discovers, despite themselves, their own operational inadequacy or inferiority.

This devastating feedback loop is bound to the fact that human beings execute a massive array of actions—including competition—for the primary purpose of feeling useful, accepted, approved, validated, and victorious. It is easy to comprehend that if a sharing modality (modalità condivisoria) were deployed instead of the competitive matrix, the pathology would not exist at all.

There are multiple pathways to distribute information or communicate; competitiveness is merely a highly complex, specific, and convoluted variant. Competitive behaviors are defined by distinct objectives and precise structural intentions. The competitive individual unconsciously hunts for self-affirmation, weaponizing performances of exceptional value and personal superiority to confirm and satisfy this systemic deficit.

We must also consider that "self-affirmation" and "satisfaction" are schematic architectures that possess a dual layer of expression:

1. Explicit Verbal Communication: The logical content and literal words spoken.

2. Implicit Non-Verbal Communication: The somatic posture, kinetics, and vocal tone.

This dual expressiveness mirrors a dual intentionality. Within the communicative flow, we isolate two alternating positions: the sender and the receiver. These two roles dictate a vast array of behavioral tracks, scaling from highly aggressive vectors to hyper-defensive walls.

Naturally, during a dialogue, the posture assumed by the sender strictly determines and conditions the posture of the receiver, which is forced into a subordinate or reactive state. For example, if the sender deploys an accusation file, the receiver is mechanically obliged to activate a defense file; if the sender shares a piece of data, the receiver cannot avoid processing it (even if they actively reject it).

Consequently, authentic self-affirmation and homeostatic satisfaction can materialize for the competitive system only if the subject successfully wins over the other. This victory cannot occur through authentic listening or genuine integration of the topics proposed by the adversary (when projectively framed as such).

Performance as a Feedback Market: The Case of Extreme Sports

Within the mechanics of POMM, a high-performance output is rarely an act of authentic self-expression; rather, it operates as a sophisticated behavioral strategy designed to capture environmental feedback. When a subject lacks established emotional autonomy, the Limbic System registers the deficit of internal validation as an immediate threat to its projective survival. To neutralize this void, the individual executes a high-stakes "performance" designed to force the environment to return a signal of value: social approval.

Within this market, behavior is never oriented toward objective real-world efficacy, but is entirely dictated by the visibility of the result. This mechanism reaches its absolute climax within the domain of high-risk and extreme sports. Here, the operational stakes are drastically elevated: the immediate risk of mortality becomes the technical generator of an autonomic arousal spike so powerful that it temporarily silences the structural lacunae of the Emotional Model.

・ Compensation of the Void: The individual locked within an internalized model of structural devaluation or invisibility finds a mechanism of instantaneous "hyper-validation" through the defiance of physical limitations (e.g., base jumping, free solo climbing, extreme motorsports).

・ The Functionality of Risk: Physical danger is not the goal; it is the technical instrument deployed to render one's existential validity "unassailable" to oneself and the environment.

The higher the objective risk, the more desperate the demand for external approval. Social applause or collective bewilderment operate as a localized neural anesthetic for a core sensation of low self-worth that the subject is incapable of managing within daily, ordinary reality.

Ultimately, an extreme performance is frequently nothing more than a limbic scream cloaked in a heroic feat—a desperate attempt to "purchase" a sense of existential legitimacy through a high-arousal thrill, precisely because the internal mechanics are not yet capable of generating homeostatic stability independent of external witnesses.

The Conservation of the Model and Pathological Vectors

All of these intersecting dynamics—competitiveness, satisfaction, performance parameters—do not inherently possess a positive or negative moral value; they are simply technically functional to the replication and conservation of the subject's specific individual Emotional Model (familial schemas).

This rule remains absolute even when the internal model is specifically wired to engineer the subject's own self-disconfirmation and subsequent frustration. This is precisely the case for individuals carrying a highly conflictual matrix (modello conflittuale) or those trapped within a chronic victim baseline (modello vittimistico).

Operational Example (The Victim-Rage Cycle): Consider the mechanics of short-tempered or wrathful individuals (persone iraconde). They almost always escalate to explosive rage only after a long period of systematic submission. They are executing a familiar family schema that mandates the passive acceptance and endurance of highly frustrating contexts until the system hits critical saturation, exploding into a sudden, violent rebellion (victimistic rage).

Culture as a Status Arena: Knowledge as a Projective Armor

When literature, poetry, art, and even science—including the highly refined technical knowledge of mind mechanics—are divorced from their vital, authentic drive (the execution of talents experienced as pure passionate expression), they undergo a specific structural metamorphosis. They degrade into sophisticated instruments of cultural competition, where value no longer resides within the quality of the content, but entirely within the hierarchical status and rank that such content guarantees to its possessor.

In this distorted configuration, culture ceases to operate as an empirical investigation of reality; it transforms into a projective armor: a rigid cognitive shell deployed by the Limbic System to protect a fragile identity instance and to scale invisible social hierarchies.

The Knowledge of Mind Mechanics as an Instrument of Dominance

A deeply paradoxical scenario is observed in those who study the human mind—the scientist, the theoretician, or the enthusiast of behavioral dynamics. Within the deterministic logic of POMM, if this specialized knowledge is not strictly oriented toward achieving one's own emotional independence, it is instantly hijacked by the limbic need for control.

・ Intellectualism as a Defense Vector: Knowing precisely "how the other operates" becomes a weapon for preemptive defense. Instead of utilizing mind mechanics to dismantle their own projective filters, the performer executes this knowledge to label, diagnose, and thus "reduce" others, converting the act of "helping" into a validation of their own existential legitimacy.

・ The Rank of the Expert: Becoming a gatekeeper of truths regarding the human psyche allows the Limbic System to occupy a pedestal of unassailable authority. Here, knowledge is not deployed to see the world more clearly, but to claim a spatial position from which one is "highly visible" and "less vulnerable to attack." Erudition converts into a certificate of superiority engineered to mask a profound, latent sense of inadequacy.

Literature and Art: The Symbol Market

Even the highest peaks of artistic and poetic creation can be reduced to mere indicators of representative social status. Within this validation market, the work does not originate from an authentic expressive urgency (the pressure of raw talent demanding execution); it is calculated based on its projected social impact. In the contemporary era, this distorting function has reached critical saturation.

・ The Aesthetics of Complexity: The performer frequently resorts to highly hermetic language or deliberately obscure artistic forms, not out of actual depth, but to construct a barrier of entry. Only those who possess the code can belong to the elite; the creator of the work thus secures a feedback loop of admiration predicated entirely on the exclusion of others.

・ The Identity of the Poet vs. The Act of Creation: The individual does not derive homeostatic peace from the raw act of writing (which is inherently a solitary, self-sufficient action); they derive gratification from the social definition of being a "Poet" or an "Artist." Without an external witness, a review, or the validation of a cultural circle, the work loses all systemic value for the performer. Its true objective was never beauty, but the successful capture of the Variable X: the attention of the other.

Science and the Competitive Fight for Truth

Even science, the sovereign realm of empirical objectivity, can be bent to the service of limbic status dynamics. The desperate race for priority, the fierce defense of an obsolete theory despite contradicting empirical data, and the warfare for institutional funding or academic prestige are frequently the raw expressions of a Limbic System in a state of high projective alarm.

・ Identification with the Idea: When a scientist structurally identifies their personal value with their discovery, any critique leveled against the theory is registered by the nervous system as a literal attack on biological survival. Scientific competition then degenerates into a warfare between competing Emotional Models fighting to avoid disconfirmation, transforming the laboratory into an arena for defensive self-preservation.

The Fragility of the Pedestal and Model Incoherence

The technical tragedy of this competitive setup resides in its extreme systemic fragility. Because cultural status depends entirely upon the continuous validation of the peer group or the public, the individual is condemned to a state of perpetual performance.

・ Intellectual Performance Anxiety: The performer must relentlessly update their database of citations, safeguard their position of visibility, and constantly guard against contemporary competitors. This generates a state of chronic alarm arousal that aggressively depletes the metabolic energies that ought to be directed toward real research or creation.

・ The Void Behind the Mask: The moment the spotlights fade, the emotional collapse of the system is total. Because there is no authentic passion driving the behavior (an action that self-sustains without needing an audience), the subject is left completely naked before their structural model deficits. The "wise expert" discovers that they have remained emotionally illiterate, the victim of an architecture that mistook the knowledge of things for the mastery of self.

The Etiological Origin of Competition

Competitive behavior originates within primary familial customs from a deep, early conviction of not being "equal to" or "good enough." Driven by this potent internal deficit, the mind executes calculations to produce a behavior that can compensate for (counteract) the assumption of inadequacy. The child develops a self-image dictated by the mandate that they must always perform and achieve to satisfy the implicit, non-conscious expectations of the parents.

                  [PRIMARY CONVICTION: INADEQUACY / DEFICIT]

                                      │

                                      ▼

                           [TONIC ALARM AROUSAL]

                        (Raw Instinctual Energy)

                                      │

                                      ▼

                        [NEOCORTICAL PROCESSING]

                (Integration with Morals, Stereotypes)

                                      │

                                      ▼

                        [COMPETITIVE ARCHITECTURES]

                 (Perpetual Performance / Status Pursuit)

This process configures itself as a constant primary activation (arousal)—a raw emotional energy that, upon reaching the neocortex, is processed, structured, and integrated with functional tools such as morals, cultural dictates, and social stereotypes. This synthesis between instinctual drive and cognitive processing gives birth to highly articulate, complex behavioral architectures.

Regrettably, however, an individual reared under this severe self-prejudice—no matter how skilled, highly capable, or extraordinary they become—will never successfully deactivate this internal driving vector through external success; the gnawing worm of structural inferiority remains intact regardless.

In adulthood, unlike in childhood, the system inverts the primary emotional activations. What developed during infancy under the driving pressure of Fear is reproduced in adulthood under the conservative pressure of Attraction—even when the system being reproduced is emotionally painful and destructive (the familiar comfort zone).

The Paradox of Relational Marginalization

Consequently, because the individual fails to find an achievement that permanently quenches their need to feel secure and fulfilled, they learn and adopt accessory behavioral mechanisms, such as victimistic manipulation. This secondary strategy is highly prevalent among highly competitive individuals.

Through the aggressive, relentless execution of their competitive matrix, they systematically alienate the very entourage from whom they desperately crave appreciation and acceptance. They engineer a state of social exclusion produced directly by the competitive drive—which was originally deployed to secure inclusion. This is a flawless systemic paradox.

These behaviors simultaneously weaponize every available cognitive tool to define and hold a position of superiority. If this practice were truly effective in delivering resolution and soothing the fear of inadequacy, the individual would naturally decommission these behaviors.

Unfortunately, this does not occur. In reality, adult competitiveness, being driven by emotional arousal (a state of continuous baseline alarm), develops and consolidates within that very same emotional state, becoming virtually immovable.

As observed across numerous other pathological behaviors, the dynamics deployed to compensate for the effects of chronic apprehension produce environments and feedbacks that actively confirm, legitimize, and stabilize the baseline alarm state as the permanent, dominant frequency of the organism.

The Cultural Misconception vs. Authentic Passion

A massive cultural misconception routinely associates competitiveness with curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, and deep exploration. It is widely presumed that through continuous peer-comparison, mutual growth occurs, offering an abundance of stimuli to sharpen individual skills.

In stark structural contrast, competitiveness is a mechanical dynamism that, by framing interpersonal comparison across the parameters of knowing/doing, is triggered exclusively by a profound, deficit-driven search for one's own validity. It operates under the absolute premise that the subject does not possess enough intrinsic worth.

Therefore, the presence of competitiveness within the cultural or intellectual domain cannot be defined as a mechanism of well-being or health; it is a coercive constraint—a predictive noose—that mandates an immense expenditure of metabolic energy without ever yielding a stable return.

Typically, an individual carrying these emotional distortions spends their entire existential trajectory attempting to compensate for and reduce these apprehensions, to the point where they freeze into rigid, automated habits that the person cannot release or abandon, even when they no longer serve any adaptive purpose.

In adulthood, these apprehensive processes of competitiveness and their operational corollaries are maintained by the primary emotion of Attraction, which strives to preserve a known, familiar status quo—even when that status quo is bound to systemic suffering (the comfort zone).

Furthermore, competitive relational dynamics are heavily saturated with moralistic legitimations (pre-set definitions of what is right, wrong, fair, or unfair). This moralistic setup favors constant pre-evaluation, generating systemic inhibition loops that block the individual from engaging in raw, verified real-world experiences that could allow the model to evolve.

Immersed in prejudice, the competitive subject operates under the absolute dominance of emotional habit; their cognitive thoughts and actions are entirely dictated by the archive, feedbacks are systematically distorted to confirm inadequacy, and the individual is trapped into continuously accelerating their competitive drive. The snake flawlessly devours its own tail.

The Architecture of Authentic Passion

At the absolute opposite pole of this dynamic, we find knowing, doing, and sharing when they are executed under the governance of an authentic passion, driven by the other primary emotion: evolutionary curiosity completely decoupled from apprehension.

            [EVOLUTIONARY CURIOSITY (NON-APPREHENSIVE)]

                                 │

                                 ▼

                    [AUTHENTIC PASSION DRIVEN]

               (Zero Deficit Premise / No Comparison)

                                 │

                                 ▼

                     [AUTONOMOUS INTEGRATION]

             - Actions remain private/contained

             - Zero demand for external validation

             - True structural personality update

Because these actions are not structured upon a baseline sensation of inadequacy, they never develop comparison behaviors or hierarchical tracking. Activities executed upon this healthy foundation frequently remain private, contained, and entirely decoupled from the need to extract acceptance or approval from the entourage. This is what generates authentic, uninhibited personality development. The individual manufactures their own internal validation and homeostatic satisfaction.

We find this optimized system active within a multitude of everyday actions where, despite the presence of a vast amount of specialized knowledge, there is zero demand for social gratification or consensus.

Conversely, relational systems anchored upon competitiveness degrade into highly complex seductive dynamics. The person, driven by the compulsion to compensate for or replicate the original lacuna of their Emotional Model, identifies the environmental feedback extracted from the entourage as the sole metric of their validity—paradoxically even when that feedback confirms their inadequacy.

The pervasiveness of competitive mechanics aggressively colonizes even daily casual interactions, particularly when an individual rushes to offer unsolicited advice or help to someone who appears to be struggling.

Unsolicited Help: Altruism vs. Negation

Are we invariably being competitive or negatory whenever we deliver assistance to another human being?

The technical difference between a competitive-negatory posture and authentic assistance is measured entirely by the proprioceptive registration of the receiver:

・ Under a Competitive-Negatory Posture: The receiver registers a highly controversial, dual intentionality. They receive the literal solution to their problem (the explicit proposal), but they simultaneously absorb the non-verbal demonstration of their own operational inadequacy, wrapped in the sender's posture of superiority and ostentation of knowledge (the implicit negation). The receiver is structurally diminished by the interaction.

・ Under Authentic Assistance: The receiver registers the objective benefit of the help without experiencing the painful, exposing spotlight of their own localized incapacity or inferiority.

A flawless diagnostic indicator of a hidden competitive matrix within an offer of assistance is that the help was entirely unsolicited.

Conclusion: Identity Autonomy as the Alternative to the Noose

Within the parameters of our educational and cultural architecture, we must explicitly focus on the fact that the acquisition of information and real-world skills pursues two precise structural objectives:

1. To produce an autonomous, self-sufficient capacity to interpret phenomenal reality.

2. To generate a robust, verified experiential archive as the non-negotiable foundation for the subject's internal individuation capacity (identity development).

In practice, this dictates an individual's capacity for independence within interpersonal relationships: their capacity to weigh variables and choose, their capacity to authentic listen, and their capacity to integrate new data.

Independence at the identity level represents the only real alternative to the competitive noose.

Only the completeness of verified real-world experiences generates the psychological identity of the individual. Conversely, a psychological instance poorly supported by incomplete, abstract experiences instills chronic structural instability, triggering a desperate hunger for compensations of a completely different, pathogenic nature.

Abstract, vague, and unverified experiences completely fail to anchor the emotional and psychological identification of the person. Left in this structural void, the system will suffer from a ravenous deficit, preferentially hijacking competitive dynamics in a compulsive, never-ending attempt to simulate an efficacy it does not possess.