Imagine a plane that crashes in the wilderness. While the silver medalist is often in agony over coming so close to gold but failing, the bronze medalist is happy that they won something rather than nothing.īasing our happiness or sadness on how close we come to success transcends sports. Some psychologists say that silver medalists are comparing up, while bronze medalists are comparing down. The agony of the silver medalists has been researched among other sports, and the results are similar. Instead, some of them displayed facial expressions of sadness and contempt. Silver medal winners, on the other hand, never smiled after their final match ended. Bronze medal winners smiled 18 out of 26 times. He found that 13 out of 14 gold medal winners smiled after their final match. He researched the facial expressions of 84 Olympic medal judo winners from 35 countries. The rankings are clear, but silver medal winners don’t come in second for happiness.ĭavid Matsumoto is a professor of psychology at San Francisco State University and a former US Olympic Judo coach. Gold is first, silver is second and bronze is third. Research into gold, silver and bronze medal winners show that silver medal winners are often unhappier than bronze medal winners.
He later told the media that “I don’t play this game for medals… and not silver ones anyway.” Some people have called him a sore loser, but apparently, his feelings are not uncommon.
After a bitter loss, John Herdman, the head coach of the Canadian women’s soccer team spitefully threw their silver medal into the crowd.
0 kommentar(er)
