DOMINATIONthemselves to appear as small as possible. On the other hand, when
chimps respond to dominant displays with mirrored dominant displays,
it usually marks the beginning of a long period of conflict that often
ends in violence.
ON ANY GIVEN SUNDAYSports lore is rife with stories about underdogs: the phenom
overcoming hardscrabble roots, the plucky second-stringers
who win the championship, the walk-ons who make it to the
pros—in short, the come-from-behind victory over another
player, another team, or life itself. Sports movies are almost
exclusively about this kind of thing: Remember the Titans,
Rudy, The Bad News Bears, A League of Their Own, Rocky,
Hoop Dreams, The Karate Kid. But the question remains:
How does a player or a team demonstrably inferior in skill
and ability prevail over a superior opponent? It happens too
often to attribute it only to luck. The answer is self-efficacy.
One of the most dramatic examples of self-efficacy in sports
took place on January 3, 1993, in an NFL playoff game fans
call simply “The Comeback.”
In the third quarter, the Buffalo Bills were down 35–3
against the Houston Oilers. Bills fans were filing through the
exits as a Houston radio announcer commented that although
the lights had been on in the stadium since morning, “you
could pretty much turn them out on the Bills right now.”
But as the clock wound down, things began to change.
Luck played some role—a bad kick, a dubious call that went
in the Bills’ favor—but even that does not account for the
burst of success the team experienced. As their comeback
began, the Bills scored 21 points in 10 minutes. A player
recalled later, “We were scoring at will.” As the Oilers proved
unable to stop them, a Bills player on the sidelines began