Is Olympic bronze medalist Sakshi Malik happier than silver-medal winner Sindhu? Sounds ridiculous? But it’s very much a possibility given how the human mind works.
The psychological element behind the thought process is called ‘counterfactual thinking’. Befuddled by the jargon? Don’t fret. Counterfactual thinking is nothing but looking at possible alternative outcomes to life events. In the case of Sindhu, the alternative outcome in the final match would have been that she wins the gold, whereas, in Sakshi’s last game at the Olympics, the alternative outcome would have been not winning any medal at all.
It is these ‘what if’ situations that cause the difference in perception of happiness.
Several psychological studies in the past have shown the presence and effects of counterfactual thinking in the Olympic Games.
In a 2009 study published in the journal Psychological Science, the researchers studied photographs of gold medal judo matches where the winner would get a gold medal and loser would get silver. They also looked at bronze medal matches in which the winner would get bronze and loser gets no medal.
This study showed that the immediate reaction of all athletes were same regardless of their culture, but however, later they modified the reactions based on their culture.
The results of the study also echo with the famous study in 1992 by Victoria Medvec, Scott Madey and Thomas Gilovich at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Volunteers unaware of medal position were asked to rate the facial expressions of athletes by looking at photographs. As you might have guessed, the bronze medal winners were rated happier than the silver winners.
Counterfactual thinking can also be observed among two sets of students, one who just made the cut-off for a category and another who made the cut off easily but missed the next higher category by a small margin. The former were found to be happier than the latter, despite low marks.
Now you know why the toppers (and their parents too!) crib for that one mark that was lost while those who just passed are happy to have passed in the first place.
In a follow-up study reported by the BBC, Gilovich and others went to the 1994 Empire State Games (annual Olympics-style Games for athletes in New York of all ages) and interviewed athletes immediately after they had competed. The silver medal winners used phrases that concentrated on what they missed out, whereas the bronze medalists contemplated on the idea of missing out a medal altogether.
Such differences make a silver medalist feel unlucky for having missed out on the gold whereas the bronze medalist feels lucky to have made the podium.