It's Better to Win the Bronze Medal
A lesson on Olympic medals and more.
The next time you’re competing in the Olympics (anything’s possible, right?), take note: you might be better off with taking third place.
Well, to be clear, you’ll probably be happiest with first place, the gold. But if you’re not going to outright WIN, better to come in third than second.
That’s right, winning third place is better than second! Or at least, that’s been the experience for many actual winners, based on multiple studies over the past thirty years.
The original study was done on winners of the 1992 Olympics. It found that silver medalists were less satisfied than bronze medallists, despite their objectively “better” finish.1
A follow-up study twenty years later replicated these results and examined how pre-event expectations affect reactions. One finding was that silver medallists may have higher expectations, which amplifies disappointment when they don’t get gold. Bronze medallists often have lower expectations (or different comparisons) so their emotion is less dampened.2
Yet another study (this one from 2021) examined the same question but with different methods. This one used AI to review the facial expressions of winners standing on the podium. It too found that bronze medallists were more likely to display genuine happiness than silver medallists, consistent with the older findings.3
So basically—this is a real thing. And doesn’t everything come down to expectations in so many parts of life?
Do your best, of course, but don’t EXPECT to win.
Another Helpful Thing: Remember It Could Have Gone Another Way
Whenever something goes really well, I try to remind myself: this outcome was not preordained. Much of it came down to chance and circumstance.
To be clear, you can—and probably should—celebrate when things go well. Life is hard, so might as well take joy in the good things.
Still, holding on to those “wins” loosely can help you feel less attached when something goes wrong. Those things, too, could have gone another way.
In thinking through some of the status anxiety I’ve experienced, it seems that unhappiness comes from when I’ve EXPECTED things. I’ve expected to be treated a certain way because of status or some other ridiculous reason, and if/when that doesn’t happen, I feel disappointed.
Solution: don’t expect to be treated a certain way! Be happy with any positive treatment at all.
Of course, we could just say “Have no expectations anywhere in life,” and that would solve a bunch of problems for Olympic athletes, you and me, and pretty much everyone else. But since that’s difficult, perhaps this is a starting point.
When less is more: counterfactual thinking and satisfaction among Olympic medalists https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7473022
Expectations and emotions of Olympic athletes https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103104001118
Study finds Olympic bronze medalists appear happier than silver medalists https://tippie.uiowa.edu/news/2021/07/when-bronze-better-study-finds-olympic-bronze-medalists-appear-happier-silver
I wholeheartedly agree...the aspect of this that is not discussed here or in the articles attached is that if it's a team sport or if there's a bracket involved to determine the medalists, the winner of the bronze medal wins a third place game to earn that medal, as opposed to the silver medalist who loses the first place game. The lasting memory is that final contest, and that's what sticks in people's heads immediately after the competition, good or bad.
Ah, the role of luck. We don't hear much about that in conventional success stories do we? Especially when entrepreneurs talk about how anyone could do this, if only they would put the work in too. Isn't it called survivor bias: we take lessons from winners, when in fact so many losers have perhaps used exactly the same process.