Counterfactual thoughts and facial expressions among Olympic medalists: a conceptual replication of the findings of Medvec, Madey, and Gilovich (1995).

PMID: 33166162 DOI: 10.1037 / xge0000992

Commentary

Counterfactual thinking, contemplating "what could have been," has been shown to influence the facial expressions of Olympic medalists, and Medvec, Madey, and Gilovich (1995) found that bronze medalists appeared happier than silver medalists after competing in Olympic events.

This phenomenon was accompanied by

a) category-based counterfactual

b) the formation of expectation-based counterfactuals.

There were two explanations for this phenomenon.

It has been confirmed that the silver medalist's thoughts formed an upward comparison with the gold medalist, "I had a chance to win the gold medal but missed it," while the bronze medalist formed a downward comparison with the fourth place finisher with the thought, "I managed to win the medal.

The second explanation suggests that medalists form counterfactuals based on expectations, with silver medalists having higher performance expectations than bronze medalists, but being disappointed by the lack of results.

To test these two explanations from previous studies, this study brings together a large dataset of medal stand photos from the Olympic Multimedia Library and Getty Images from the 2000-2016 Olympics, and predictions from SportsIllustrated.

Using automated facial expression encoding, the study found evidence to support both category-based and expectation-based counterfactual explanations for the representation of Olympic medalists.