Why bronze medalists tend to be happier than silver medalists

Those who finish third in a championship are happier than the runners-up. How is this possible?

The 1992 Barcelona Olympics not only changed this city forever and made it the capital of Mediterranean tourism that it is today (for better and for worse), but also left us with one of the most curious left us one of the most curious investigations about psychology applied to sport and the achievement of personal goals. and the achievement of personal goals.

One of a series of investigations that in the 90's made psychology turn around what was known about motivation and the perception of the value of things. Basically, it showed that, under certain conditions, people who perform better at a task may be much less satisfied and happy than those who do not perform as well as those who do not perform as well..

Breaking paradigms

For a long time, it has been believed in the field of research in psychology and economics that our way of reacting to certain events and experiences corresponds to the degree to which these are objectively positive or negative for us.

Of course, total objectivity does not work, but in this context it was understood that an objectively positive outcome is one in which we gain in security, social recognition and the probability of receiving pleasurable stimuli grow and come to compensate for the efforts, resources and time invested in making this experience happen.

In other words, the positive was linked to an economistic and rational logicIt was assumed that our priorities follow a scale similar to Maslow's pyramid and that what motivates us is directly proportional to the amount of value of the resources we obtain.

Applying common sense to the Olympics

Thus, a gold medal will always make us tend to react more positively than a silver medal, because its objective value is greater: in fact, its only utility is that it is a more valuable object than other trophies, its only usefulness is that of being a more valuable object than the other trophies.. Since all athletes believe that a gold medal is better than a silver or bronze medal, it is logical that the degree of happiness and euphoria they experience when winning the first two is greater than that experienced when winning bronze.

This assumption, however, has been challenged several times in recent decades, after several studies showed that the degree of happiness and euphoria experienced when winning the first two is greater than that experienced when winning the bronze.This assumption, however, has been questioned several times in recent decades, after several studies have shown how irrational we are when it comes to valuing our achievements and the results of our decisions, even when these have not yet been made and we are foreseeing what might happen if we choose one option or the other. This is precisely the direction in which the 1995 research on the Barcelona Olympics, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, pointed in 1995.

Research based on facial expressions

In this research, the aim was to compare the reactions of silver medal winners with those of bronze medal winners to see to what extent their degree of anger or joy corresponded to the objective value of their trophy.. The study was based on the assumption that "the face is the mirror of the soul", i.e. from the interpretation of facial expressions, a group of judges can very roughly imagine the emotional state of the person in question.

Of course, there is always the possibility that the person may lie, but that is where the Olympics come into play; the effort and dedication of elite athletes make it unlikely that, even if they wanted to hide their emotions, they would be too successful in that mission. The stress and emotional load associated with such competitions are so high that self-control aimed at regulating such details becomes rather weak. Therefore, their expressions and gestures should be relatively reliable..

After several students scored on a scale of 10 the reactions of athletes just after winning their medal, the lowest value being the idea of "suffering" and the highest "ecstasy", the researchers studied the averages of these scores to see what they found..

Silver or bronze? Less is more

The results obtained by this team of researchers were surprising. Contrary to what common sense would dictate, those who won a silver medal were no happier than those who won the bronze.. In fact, the opposite was true. Based on the images recorded just after the athletes' results were known, the silver medal winners were rated an average of 4.8 on the scale, while the group of bronze medal winners scored an average of 7.1.

As for the ratings made on the images of the awards ceremony held later in the day, the scores were 4.3 for the silver medalists and 5.7 for the bronze medalists. The bronze medalists, the third in discord, were still the winners..

What had happened? Possible hypotheses for this phenomenon

The possible explanation for this phenomenon was to do with the conception of the human being who objectively values his achievements, and it has to do with comparisons and expectations in the context of the exercise. The athletes who won the silver medal had aspired to the gold medal, while those who had received the gold medal were the ones who had won the silver medal.while those who received the bronze medal expected to win either that award or nothing.

The emotional type of reaction, therefore, has much to do with the imagined alternative: the silver medalists may even torture themselves thinking about what could have happened if they had tried a little harder or had made another decision, while those who win the bronze medal think of an alternative that is equivalent to not having won any medal, since this is the scenario closest to their actual situation and with greater emotional implications.