Are You a Wolf or a Sheep?

July 5, 2006 -- -- How do you handle defeat? It depends on whether you're a wolf or a sheep.

If underneath that calm exterior you have the domineering demeanor of a wolf, you're going to hate defeat.

But if you're really a sheep, you're more likely to greet defeat with a measure of joy, or at least relief.

That's the basic finding of a research project at the University of Michigan designed to see how the desire to hold power over others affects someone's ability to accept defeat.

About 50 people, mostly students at the university, were divided into "wolves" and "sheep" based on their performance on a standardized test. They also were tested for the presence of stress hormones before and after the test.

Not surprisingly, the wolves hated losing. But not the sheep.

"As our results show, one man's poison is another man's cake," said psychology professor Oliver Schultheiss, who conducted the same study earlier in Germany and found the same results. "The power-hungry wolves among our participants were hit hardest by defeat, whereas the sheep couldn't care less about being beaten.

"This runs counter to the idea that everybody likes coming out at the top of the heap," he added. "That's a really surprising finding for us."

Michelle Wirth, who is working on her doctorate under Schultheiss, said the results underscore the fact that winning is everything for some people and a burden for others.

"There are people who have no desire to have power over others, almost to the degree that they are afraid of it," Wirth said. "It's not a comfortable situation for them, and they are not used to it."

Wirth, Schultheiss and Katy Welsh, co-authors of a report on the research in a recent issue of the journal Hormones and Behavior, relied on a standardized test that has been used for at least half a century to measure someone's desire to have an impact on others or rule over them.

"We bring subjects into the lab, two at a time, who are strangers, and we give them this little contest," Wirth said. The participants do not know what the researchers are trying to measure.