Crocodile Smiles

I was listening to the BBC4 Extra Podcast Hour whilst driving for my work today and came across a brief mention of this piece of interesting research. Yes, a bit lazy on my part and for which I will win no medals.

In 1892, psychologist William James wrote these words in his foundational book, The Principles of Psychology.

So we have the paradox of a man shamed to death because he is only the second pugilist or the second oarsman in the world. That he is able to beat the whole population of the globe minus one is nothing; he has “pitted” himself to beat that one; and as long as he doesn't do that nothing else counts.

James’s observation echoes a sentiment that is well known in psychology: a person’s achievements matter less than how that person subjectively perceives those achievements. 

In athletic competitions there are clear winners and losers. In the Olympics, the gold medallist wins the competition; the silver medallist has a slightly lower achievement, and the bronze medallist a lower achievement still. 

One might expect that their happiness with their performance would mirror this order, with the gold medallist being happiest, followed by the silver medallist, and then the bronze. 

Psychologists Victoria Medvec and Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University, and Scott Madey of the University of Toledo think that this phenomenon can be explained by counterfactual thinking. This means that people compare their objective achievements to what “might have been.”

The most obvious counterfactual thought for a silver medallist might be to focus on almost winning gold. The athlete or competitor would focus on the difference between coming in first place, and any other outcome. The bronze medallist, however, might focus their counterfactual thoughts downward towards fourth place. They would focus on almost not winning a medal at all. 

In psychological speak the categorical difference, between being a medallist and not winning a medal, does not exist for the comparison between first and second place.

It is because of this incongruous comparison that the bronze medallist, who is objectively worse off, would be more pleased with themselves, and happier with their achievement, than the silver medallist.

To scientifically investigate this question, the researchers took video footage of the 1992 summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. 

Specifically, they recorded the medal ceremonies and showed them to undergraduate students, as well as footage from the athletic competitions immediately following announcements of the winners. 

They asked them to rate the happiness displayed by each of the medallists on a 10-point scale, with 1 being “agony” and 10 being “ecstasy.”

Taken immediately following the announcement of the outcome of the competition, on average, the Silver Medallists scored a 4.8 and the Bronze Medallists scored a 7.1. Later in the day at the actual medal ceremony the Silver Medallists scored a 4.3 on the happiness scale and the Bronze Winner, 5.7. Statistical analysis proved that Bronze Medallists were visibly happier than the Silver Medallists at both sampling times of the study.

In 2006, psychologist David Matsumoto of San Francisco State University, together with Bob Willingham of The World of Judo magazine teamed up to see if this pattern would hold up when considering facial expressions following judo matches at the 2004 summer Olympics in Athens. They collected data from eighty-four athletes and thirty-five countries at three different times: immediately after their matches, when they received the medal, and when they posed on the podium.

Altogether, they found that thirteen of the fourteen gold medal winners smiled immediately after they completed their winning match, while eighteen of the twenty-six bronze medallists smiled. 

However, none of the silver medallists smiled immediately after their match ended. More interestingly, the facial expression that were recorded among silver medal winners ranged from sadness (43%) to contempt (14%) to nothing (29%). 

This means that it wasn't just that the silver medal winners were less happy than gold medallists; instead, as Matsumoto and Willingham write, "those who displayed something displayed discrete, negative emotions."When it came to the medal ceremony and podium pose, however, silver medallists were more likely to smile. 

Indeed, 96.4% of the athletes displayed some sort of smile at this time. 

However, careful analysis of smile types indicated that the smiles displayed by the silver medallists were less genuine and more forced on both occasions than those of the gold and bronze medallists. In particular, both gold and bronze winners were more likely to display duchenne smiles, which scientists have described as particularly associated with positive emotions.

Taken together, the researchers concluded that "those who showed signs of genuinely enjoyable emotions at the end of the match were more likely to show those same signs of enjoyable emotions when they received the medal and posed on the podium. Conversely, those who did not display signs of enjoyable emotions at the end of the match were likely to not display such signs during the medal ceremonies, despite the fact that most athletes smiled."

There may, indeed, be times when less really is more.

Authors of the study as published in Scientific American 2012Medvec VH, Madey SF, & Gilovich T (1995). Matsumoto D, & Willingham B (2006).