After the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympics, researchers from Cornell
University studied the facial expressions of all the athletes who won
gold, silver, and bronze medals. They analyzed footage of ceremonies and
television interviews and found that gold medalists seemed the
happiest.
What a shock, right?
But they also noticed something surprising: The bronze medalists seemed much happier than the silver medalists.
How could athletes who finished third be happier than athletes who finished second? The answer lies in understanding what psychologists call counterfactual thinking, or what the rest of us call, "Wait; if only..."
In simple terms (handily enough the only terms I understand), counterfactual thinking occurs when we imagine how things might have turned out. When something happens -- especially something significant -- we think about alternatives to our current reality in order to place that event in context.
Counterfactual thinking sometimes makes us feel good about where we are in comparison to where we could be. And sometimes it makes us feel worse. Either way, we do a lot of comparing: Between where we are and where we could have been... both positively and negatively.
So take the silver medalists: They used an upper counterfactual, meaning they judged themselves in comparison to the gold medalists. As a result their, "Wait... but what if?" questions fell along the lines of, "Wait; if only I had just trained harder... then I might have won a gold medal," or, "Wait; if only I had just gotten a little better start... then I could have finished first."
Silver medalists tended to dwell on what they could have done differently to win the gold.
Contrast that with the bronze medalists. They used a downward counterfactual, meaning they judged themselves in comparison to all of the people who didn't win any medal. By comparing themselves to what could have been -- no medal at all -- the bronze medalists felt thrilled just to be standing on the podium.
And that made them seem happier than the silver medalists.
What a shock, right?
But they also noticed something surprising: The bronze medalists seemed much happier than the silver medalists.
How could athletes who finished third be happier than athletes who finished second? The answer lies in understanding what psychologists call counterfactual thinking, or what the rest of us call, "Wait; if only..."
In simple terms (handily enough the only terms I understand), counterfactual thinking occurs when we imagine how things might have turned out. When something happens -- especially something significant -- we think about alternatives to our current reality in order to place that event in context.
Counterfactual thinking sometimes makes us feel good about where we are in comparison to where we could be. And sometimes it makes us feel worse. Either way, we do a lot of comparing: Between where we are and where we could have been... both positively and negatively.
So take the silver medalists: They used an upper counterfactual, meaning they judged themselves in comparison to the gold medalists. As a result their, "Wait... but what if?" questions fell along the lines of, "Wait; if only I had just trained harder... then I might have won a gold medal," or, "Wait; if only I had just gotten a little better start... then I could have finished first."
Silver medalists tended to dwell on what they could have done differently to win the gold.
Contrast that with the bronze medalists. They used a downward counterfactual, meaning they judged themselves in comparison to all of the people who didn't win any medal. By comparing themselves to what could have been -- no medal at all -- the bronze medalists felt thrilled just to be standing on the podium.
And that made them seem happier than the silver medalists.
