The Homa Files

Punch line: Research by three U.S. academics, who analyzed heat-of-the-moment reactions, medal-stand temperament and interviews of Olympians, shows that bronze-medal winners, on average, are happier with their finishes than silver medalists.

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Excerpted from USA Today: Analysts: Bronze medal leads to more happiness than silver

Take silver, and you tend to fixate on the near miss.

Score bronze, and you are thankful you were not shut out altogether.

Psychologists described it as counterfactual thinking.

“It’s like a student who gets a B, missing an A by one point. The B’s no longer that good.” 

“Same way when you miss your flight by five minutes. You say, ‘Well, I could have made up five minutes somehow.’ If you get close to it, you think, ‘There are things I could have done.’

“I don’t know whether we learn that type of thinking about what we could have done or if it’s something that’s wired into us.”

Full article:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/vancouver/2010-02-22-bronze-vs-silver_N.htm

Thanks to RSJ and EAH for feeding the lead

This entry was posted on March 2, 2010 at 7:30 am and is filed under Psychology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.