[HN Gopher] Facial expression software confirms bronze medalists...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Facial expression software confirms bronze medalists happier than
       silver
        
       Author : mnming
       Score  : 179 points
       Date   : 2021-07-30 13:19 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twin-cities.umn.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twin-cities.umn.edu)
        
       | omgwtfbbq wrote:
       | 2nd place is just 1st loser
        
       | smileypete wrote:
       | Only an anecdote, but...
       | 
       | https://cdn-ctstaging.pressidium.com/wp-content/uploads/2020...
       | https://www.taipeitimes.com/images/2012/08/05/P18-120805-a5....
       | 
       | :)
        
         | shadilay wrote:
         | In the case of the Chinese athlete, perhaps it is because the
         | Chinese government takes a very dim view of 'failure'.
        
       | jeegsy wrote:
       | I love it when studies match intuition. Silver mad they didnt get
       | Gold, Bronze happy to get a medal.
        
       | asciimov wrote:
       | As someone who was involved with music competitions I can attest
       | to being happier with 3rd than 2nd. For me it was the fact that
       | if I was 3rd, well at least 2 people were better than me, but if
       | I was 2nd (and it was a close competition) it became an issue of
       | "why did I loose?"
       | 
       | When competition is close you can loose for factors outside of
       | the competition itself. You can loose because of differences in
       | judging opinions or because of a Judge not liking you, worse
       | ranked competitors can win due to scoring calculation systems,
       | you can even loose biased on how hungry or how bad the judges
       | last meal was.
        
       | mritun wrote:
       | For my bachelors I went to this school in India which did grading
       | on a 10 point scale -
       | 
       | AA == 10, DD == 4, FF (fail and eligible for re-exam) == 3 and FR
       | (fail and repeat the coursework next semester).
       | 
       | Gradesheet was put publically in the hall. I consistently saw
       | that the two happiest people were those either got the AA or DD.
       | 
       | When I got AA I was obviously happy! Once I got a DD on a
       | particularly difficult course. I was damn happy I didn't fail!
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | I feel like this would be heavily biased by the culture of the
       | people in their training set and the culture of the medalists.
       | Different cultures have different facial expressions for
       | happiness.
        
       | antiterra wrote:
       | I think studies confirming conventional wisdom are often unfairly
       | maligned as uselessly addressing the obvious. It makes sense to
       | back up perception with data.
       | 
       | However, the model of competitors feeling that silver='almost
       | won' and bronze='lucky to get a medal' is by no means as novel as
       | they claim. It's strange to me that they present it as 'new'
       | instead of a commonly held
        
       | partiallypro wrote:
       | As Jerry Seinfeld once said, when you win silver, you're the 1st
       | place loser. No one lost ahead of you.
        
       | chegra wrote:
       | I also found my C students are happier than my A students.
        
         | JamilD wrote:
         | A students are often formerly unhappy C students.
         | 
         | C students are often happy C students.
        
           | dogorman wrote:
           | > _A students are often formerly unhappy C students._
           | 
           | Is there any empirical evidence for this? It flies in the
           | face of my experience, which is that A students were A
           | students from the start; that C students almost never become
           | A students, and that A students sometimes become C students.
        
             | ska wrote:
             | I think both cases exist commonly.
             | 
             | There are plenty of people entirely capable of A marks in
             | most educational situations who don't get them because they
             | don't care and don't do the work. Something changes and
             | they get interested. The jump from an indifferent C to a
             | solid A often isn't that far.
             | 
             | Somewhat related: There are more PhD's than you might
             | expect that were also high school drop outs.
        
       | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | squarefoot wrote:
       | In sports where there's no group competition but results come
       | after gold final, bronze final, semi-finals, etc. a silver medal
       | means you lost the gold final, that is, your last match was a
       | defeat, while if you get the bronze it means your last match
       | ended up a victory, also a victory coming well after you accepted
       | the reality that there won't be any gold.
        
       | anm89 wrote:
       | I wonder if there is bias where, in advance of the competition,
       | the silver earners are more likely to think they have a shot at
       | gold than the bronze earners or if they are generally more
       | experienced.
        
       | bmmayer1 wrote:
       | The Olympics is really my favorite sporting event. Although, I
       | think I have a problem with that silver medal. Because when you
       | think about it, you win the gold - you feel good, you win the
       | bronze - you think, "Well, at least I got something". But when
       | you win that silver it's like, "Congratulations, you almost won.
       | Of all the losers you came in first of that group. You're the
       | number one loser. No one lost ahead of you!"
       | 
       | - Jerry Seinfeld
        
         | sgustard wrote:
         | If they introduced a 4th place medal, would the bronze
         | medalists feel worse?
        
         | cdstyh wrote:
         | Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to other
         | people.
        
           | slingnow wrote:
           | ... said no one who ever competed professionally in anything.
        
             | sitkack wrote:
             | Simone Biles only competes with herself.
        
               | joekim wrote:
               | Are you implying she doesn't go for gold?
        
               | lupire wrote:
               | If that was her goal she could sandbag, but she doesn't.
        
         | gnicholas wrote:
         | Well, there's a silver lining (pun intended), which is that the
         | silver medal is made out of pure silver and is therefore worth
         | much more than the bronze medal.
         | 
         | The gold medal is made of solid silver that is plated by a
         | small amount (4oz, IIRC) of gold. EDIT: 6 grams, not 4oz, as
         | pointed out below.
        
           | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
           | 4oz would be a large amount of gold, over $7000 worth.
           | 
           | From an article I read:
           | 
           | This year's medals are made from material recycled from
           | electronic devices donated by the people of Japan. However,
           | Olympic gold medals are required to be made from at least
           | 92.5% silver, and must contain a minimum of six grams of
           | gold. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic gold medals contain more than
           | six grams of gold plating on pure silver. Silver medals are
           | pure silver while bronze medals are red brass (95% copper and
           | 5% zinc). The Olympic gold medals at Tokyo 2020 weigh roughly
           | 556g, with silver weighing 550g and bronze 450g.
        
           | rowanG077 wrote:
           | This is one of the things I find most annoying about the
           | Olympics. Oh you spend billions on useless frivolous things.
           | And then the literal gold medal is fake.
        
             | gnicholas wrote:
             | Unless they made the medals much smaller, that would be
             | incredibly expensive. They give out thousands of medals,
             | after all. Someone smarter than me can calculate the cost
             | based on the size of the medals and the density of gold.
             | 
             | Also, athletes would probably feel more pressure to sell
             | their medals if they were solid gold. That would enrich
             | them, which is good, but there's something to be said for
             | the medals remaining in the hands of the athletes.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | rowanG077 wrote:
               | I once calculated it and came to the conclusion it was
               | easily doable for the medals to be pure gold.
               | 
               | Let's take the Rio 2016 medal as a reference. It has 494g
               | of silver and 6g of gold. For a cost of $564 [1]. There
               | were 307 gold medals awarded[2]. This comes to a total of
               | 173148$ for the medals.
               | 
               | Let's take the worst possible conversion. i.e. you want a
               | solid gold medal with the same volume as the original.
               | Silver has a density of 10,49g per cubic centimeter and
               | gold has a density of 19.32g per cubic centimeter. So to
               | get the same volume we need 910g of gold to replace the
               | silver. Price of gold per gram in 2016 was about 40$. So
               | this 910g of gold would cost 36400$. For a total gold
               | medal price of 53,329,584$. Let's ignore the silver you
               | no longer need since it's not that significant.
               | 
               | For reference the entirety of the rio olympics cost 13.2
               | billion[3]. Having solid gold medals would be about 0.4%
               | additional cost. Yes it's a lot of money but it doesn't
               | seem unrealistic to me at all.
               | 
               | [1] https://somethingborrowedpdx.com/how-much-does-a-
               | olympic-gol...
               | 
               | [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Summer_Olympics_med
               | al_tab....
               | 
               | [3] https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1051553/cost-
               | of-rio-...
        
               | gnicholas wrote:
               | > _There were 307 gold medals awarded_
               | 
               | Does that account for team sports, or Paralympics?
        
               | rowanG077 wrote:
               | It doesn't include team sport and the paralympics. But I
               | wouldn't include the paralympics anyway, just like I
               | wouldn't include the youth olympics. Team sport actually
               | does have to be counted. But I don't think it changes the
               | conclusion. By far the most olympic sports are solo.
        
               | handmodel wrote:
               | Even if only 10% of olympic sports were team sports - but
               | those teams were things like basketball/soccer/volleyball
               | that have 15+ players per team - that would mean the
               | majority of medals given out are to people who were on a
               | team.
        
               | lupire wrote:
               | it's not the cost that matters, its the uselessness and
               | hugely increased security risk.
        
               | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
               | Edit: this is wrong, see the comment below, I
               | misunderstood an article that said "339 medals will be
               | awarded". It's 339 events will be contested, and of
               | course team events have multiple medals.
               | 
               | Well, not really thousands of medals - in this year's
               | summer games there will be 339 medals awarded, so 113
               | gold medals.
               | 
               | Tokyo gold medals weigh 556g, so if they were solid gold
               | (their weight would differ a bit but be in the same ball
               | park) each gold medal would be worth nearly $33,000 just
               | in metal costs, which would work out to a total of
               | $3,694,286 for all the gold medals.
        
               | strulovich wrote:
               | I think you miscalculated. 339 sets of medals will be
               | given for a total of 5000. Also, the Paralympic Games add
               | some more medals.
               | 
               | So the actual number will be north of 10 million it
               | seems.
        
               | Thrymr wrote:
               | So, around 0.1% of the cost of putting on the games?
               | 
               | https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tokyo-olympics-
               | staggering-p...
        
               | lovecg wrote:
               | The extra security around all this gold would probably
               | end up costing more than the medals themselves.
        
               | gnicholas wrote:
               | > _their weight would differ a bit but be in the same
               | ball park_
               | 
               | Apparently gold is nearly twice as dense as silver:
               | https://www.edrsilver.com/English/ceo-corner/ceo-corner-
               | deta...
        
             | uyt wrote:
             | The additional cost might be a small percentage of the
             | budget but what does it buy you? If you can't justify it,
             | it will get cut. All the other frivolous things have pointy
             | haired managers advocating for them.
             | 
             | This happens a lot for any sport considered fun or
             | prestigious. For example the prize money from competitive
             | programming in the 2000s was actually pretty decent
             | (topcoder paid out 100k total). Then they realized the top
             | people will still show up even if there's no prize.
        
               | rowanG077 wrote:
               | Oh I definitely understand. I just think it's ridiculous.
               | The event is about the olympians. Spending a fraction of
               | a percent of the budget of the event on the price seems
               | fair.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | choeger wrote:
         | That's why I think there should be _two_ silver medals,
         | immediately given to the winner of two semi-finals.
         | 
         | If you think about any sport with a one-on-one final, the
         | silver medal is for the loser of that final. But the same
         | team/athlete _won_ a semi-final and were probably excited when
         | they did. So just hand them the medal at that point.
         | 
         | Things are a tad more complicated for tournaments with 3+n
         | finalists. But I have the feeling that being the second-fastest
         | out of ten sprinters is not a bad thing.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | malachismith wrote:
       | I love that it took facial expression software for people to
       | understand this. All anyone had to do was talk to a dozen
       | internationally competitive athletes to understand this. Happiest
       | competitor is the one who wins. Second happiest is the one who
       | finishes third. Third happiest is second. Fourth happiest are all
       | the finalists who didn't medal and didn't take fourth. And fourth
       | place... Yeah. Fourth place SUCKS.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Bronze medallist by the time the competition is near the end,
       | usually compete just to get on podium, or they will feel a silver
       | was lost instead of gold, but a podium was gained. Silver
       | medalist usually compete for the gold near the end, a gold lost
       | is a bigger loss, and a silver is a bad consolation.
        
       | decebalus1 wrote:
       | Of course they do [1]
       | 
       | https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bronze-medal
        
       | steerablesafe wrote:
       | So how do sports with single-elimination compare to other sports
       | in this regard? In single-elimination bronze medalists finish on
       | a high note, while silver medalists finish with a loss.
        
       | Shmebulock wrote:
       | This fits my personal experience very well.
       | 
       | I was once a volunteer at the world championships of a team
       | sport. At the podium sceremony my job was to lead the team to the
       | spot where each player received their medal. The bronze medalists
       | were super happy and smiling. Almost all silver medalists that I
       | led to the podium were literally crying.
       | 
       | No sophisticated facial recognition was needed to ascertain who
       | was happier.
        
         | necovek wrote:
         | Medal ceremonies in team sports are usually after a bronze
         | medal match (which bronze medalist won), and a gold medal match
         | (which silver medalist _just_ lost).
        
         | nerdponx wrote:
         | In addition to the "last match" effect mentioned in the thread,
         | I wonder if this has to do with who wins which medal. Maybe the
         | people winning bronze are more often doing better than they
         | expected, while the people winning silver are more likely to
         | expect that they might have been able to win gold.
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | The old joke: "And remember, second place is first loser!"
        
       | JamilD wrote:
       | I'm very skeptical about the veracity and accuracy of facial
       | recognition software to detect emotions.
       | 
       | I went to an affective computing conference in 2019 and was
       | underwhelmed; models couldn't distinguish between looking upwards
       | (and raising your eyebrows) from exhibiting surprise. Emotions
       | are complex and personal, and the phrase from the article "facial
       | expression software -- which nearly eliminates possible bias"
       | seems absolutely ludicrous to me.
       | 
       | I take results like this with an absolutely massive grain of
       | salt, and don't expect them to be reproducible.
       | 
       | The danger is that they're "catchy", clickbait-y results, that
       | are popular because people like to hypothesize about underlying
       | psychological reasons why those bronze medalists might be
       | happier. But let's examine the core claim first, and not take
       | facial recognition software as a ground truth for emotional
       | state.
        
         | rank0 wrote:
         | Excellent point. People need to be more skeptical of novel
         | technology in general. I mean, the big proponents of any new
         | technology usually have a financial incentive to over sell its
         | capabilities. I've noticed that with AI/ML especially people
         | are willing to hand-wave away nuance and blindly believe that
         | anything is possible. In reality AI is mostly iterative pattern
         | matching and is far from perfect.
         | 
         | In this case however, I do believe that bronze medalists are
         | happier than silver medalists provided that all the
         | participants had a similar probability of victory.
        
           | necovek wrote:
           | > I do believe that bronze medalists are happier than silver
           | medalists provided that all the participants had a similar
           | probability of victory.
           | 
           | But that's never the case: betting companies are good at
           | earning money off of that.
        
         | rflrob wrote:
         | In this case, however, there is evidently prior research using
         | humans judging the faces that shows similar results. There
         | definitely are all kinds of biases that could creep in from
         | using facial recognition software, but a well designed study
         | will attempt to quantify and control for those biases.
         | 
         | I definitely agree that the idea that software eliminates bias
         | is laughable. Swaps it for another, hopefully less extreme set
         | of biases doesn't draw as many clicks, though.
        
           | kapp_in_life wrote:
           | >prior research using humans judging the faces that shows
           | similar results
           | 
           | I always assumed that was generally what the models were
           | trained from, are they not? Agree though that ai will just
           | replicate the bias in the training data, which is why its
           | important to have "bias free" data. Or at least as much as
           | such a thing exists.
        
       | pugworthy wrote:
       | Funny enough there's a meme that illustrates the findings.
        
       | omoikane wrote:
       | This is replicating a 1995 research, the new bit here appears to
       | be the use of software to analyze facial expressions.
        
         | golemiprague wrote:
         | That's actually good since most psychological research is not
         | replicated and many times when they try to replicate the
         | results are different.
        
       | agumonkey wrote:
       | `better than nothing > so closed to win` I guess
        
       | andi999 wrote:
       | In high school there was a kid who got all A except one B. First
       | I thought they must be very happy. Then I thought again....
        
         | rejectedandsad wrote:
         | That was me. I wasn't happy at all after I got 2nd.
        
         | duxup wrote:
         | In my experience nobody fretted about grades and minor grading
         | issues more than the folks who had high marks.
         | 
         | The burden of perfection (or close to it) is pretty brutal.
         | 
         | Among other topics the film Gattaca seemed to address that
         | issue.
        
           | userbinator wrote:
           | The effect is also strengthened when you're competing with
           | your peers for grades; it's been several decades now but I
           | still remember someone beating me by 0.7% going into the
           | final exam, and me finishing the course 0.1% ahead of him.
           | It's interesting I still remember the differences, but not
           | the grade (high 90s, probably) nor the course.
           | 
           | (Contrary to popular western culture, there are groups who
           | enjoy "grade-racing" --- and from first-hand experience, I
           | can say it was very motivational as well as stressful.)
        
           | piyh wrote:
           | Taking the "good enough" approach in life has probably left a
           | lot of potential on the table, but it really has gotten the
           | maximal utility out of any work I put in. It's probably
           | ~50%-100% more work to go from a B+ in life to a straight A.
        
             | rurp wrote:
             | The opportunity costs can be profound as well. Doing B
             | rather than A level work on many tasks can allow you to get
             | 2-3x more things done.
        
           | Buttons840 wrote:
           | Like worrying about the first tiny scratch on your new car or
           | new phone. Eventually it happens, you feel bad, but then are
           | free from the burden of perfection.
        
             | david422 wrote:
             | One of the nice things about buying used. Not only do you
             | get the discount, but you also don't need to worry about
             | that perfection.
        
               | duxup wrote:
               | I have bought a lot of my kids toys second hand. "Yeah
               | whatever throw that thing and see what happens!"
        
         | Xophmeister wrote:
         | I got a distinction for my masters thesis, but my exam results
         | where such that I was 1-2% off from a distinction overall. I
         | was not happy that day!
        
         | jhgb wrote:
         | I was that guy in college. It's an OCD-triggering experience,
         | looking at the transcript. Can confirm that it's not a good
         | feeling.
        
       | xhkkffbf wrote:
       | If you adjust for population growth and the growth of the games,
       | it's clear that we should be giving medals to more than just the
       | top three. And the results have gotten even closer. When I see
       | someone like Torri Huske miss a medal by a hundredths of seconds,
       | I think that something is just wrong.
       | 
       | There should be medals going down much lower in the results.
        
         | dogma1138 wrote:
         | That's true for some events, baseball has 6 teams competing so
         | if you copied say MOBA's/RTS's and have bronze, silver, gold,
         | platinum and diamond you'll have what 5 out of 6 teams getting
         | a medal?
         | 
         | Medals aren't everything passing the qualifiers is an
         | achievement on its own...
        
         | Apocryphon wrote:
         | What metals would those runner-up medals be made of?
        
           | GloriousKoji wrote:
           | Aluminum, glass, plastic and cardboard.
        
           | otherme123 wrote:
           | The fourth place is sometimes called "chocolate medal". But
           | if IRC, 4 to 8 get an olympic diploma.
        
       | protomyth wrote:
       | Also, in bracket events, the bronze medalists won their last
       | match while the silver medalists lost their's.
        
       | MichaelZuo wrote:
       | Makes sense, bronze medallist are just happy to be on the podium
       | whereas silver medallists usually messed up slightly, or even
       | worse are simply slightly worse than the top dog, which prevented
       | them from getting the gold.
        
       | heroHACK17 wrote:
       | tl;dr:
       | 
       | Silver: "Shit... I was so close to Gold." Bronze: "Damn, I
       | medaled!"
        
         | xt00 wrote:
         | This seems logical, especially if the person who got bronze was
         | not expecting to get higher. If the person who had gotten gold
         | previously got bronze they probably are not going to be feeling
         | this way so, so a bit of an expectations game too potentially..
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | If you take some simple theory - say that the top five people
           | will be roughly the same across any tries, and three will
           | metal, then the bronze medal winner is likely to be someone
           | who wasn't certain they could medal at all.
        
       | jb775 wrote:
       | Probably because mentally bronze is 1 place away from not being a
       | medalist while silver is 1 place away from being best in the
       | world.
        
       | croes wrote:
       | How often was the bronze winner a surprise winner or a runner up
       | and gold and silver winners the favorites?
        
       | agnosticmantis wrote:
       | My prediction: Soon this is going to be generalized and percolate
       | into all sorts of self-help books and pop psy TED talks: why less
       | is more, you need to lose to win, etc.
        
       | crb wrote:
       | Confirming research done by Jerry Seinfeld in 1998:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK9rbwM3omA
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | locallost wrote:
       | I did not see any mention of the type of sports they analysed. I
       | think it makes a big difference, e.g. winning silver in a
       | tournament type competition like basketball means you lost your
       | last game, whereas winning bronze means you won your last game.
       | On the other hand a 100 meter dash is 8 people racing all at the
       | same time, so winning silver does not feel like losing gold as
       | much to me. You still beat out the bronze medalist in direct
       | competition.
       | 
       | edit: but of course, it's also common that there are two big
       | names in a competition, so winning silver in that case means you
       | lost gold.
        
         | buran77 wrote:
         | Due to the 3 place podium, regardless of the type of
         | competition second place looks like narrowly missing a total
         | win, while third place looks like narrowly missing a total
         | loss. People tend to look at the alternative to decide their
         | relative feelings.
         | 
         | It's why even tragic situations can be an opportunity to be
         | happy because the alternative is even worse, while some happy
         | situations can be disappointing because they could have been so
         | much better. Or the stock market where a modest win that could
         | have been huge might feel worse than a loss that could have
         | been huge.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | bragh wrote:
         | Yes, IIRC, for Formula One there was a saying ages ago that the
         | 3 most unhappy participants after a race are 2nd place (did not
         | win), 4th place (did not get to be on the podium) and 7th place
         | (did not get any points).
         | 
         | edit: Now I looked at it again and I see that F1 has adjusted
         | their points system throughout the following years, so you need
         | to replace the 7th place with whatever is relevant now.
        
           | tome wrote:
           | I remember the same. It seems we're nearly 20 years out of
           | date! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_World
           | _Cham...
        
           | DC-3 wrote:
           | 11th is the current equivalent.
        
           | notjustanymike wrote:
           | They simplified F1 a bit. Now the most unhappy participants
           | are Haas.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | irrational wrote:
             | What do you mean by Haas?
        
               | Scown wrote:
               | It's one of the Formula 1 teams
        
               | skytreader wrote:
               | Just a bit more context that might explain why Haas might
               | be the unhappy ones currently. There's a lot of capital-D
               | Drama surrounding the team right now but I'll stick to
               | these two facts:
               | 
               | - Due to financial reasons they had to let go their
               | veteran drivers (just two in F1) from last season and are
               | currently featuring an all-rookie line up.
               | 
               | - They've gone on record to say that they are not
               | developing the 2021 car, instead focusing on the specs
               | change for 2022.
               | 
               | So two rookies in a team that is basically just in the
               | competition for the participation. At least one driver
               | from Williams, the bottom feeders a season or two ago,
               | have the chutzpah to aim for points finish this year.
               | Haas can't be a fulfilling team to be in right now.
        
               | JshWright wrote:
               | Oh, and one of their rookie drivers sexually assaulted a
               | woman and posted it on Instagram...
        
               | bluthund wrote:
               | Watch an F1 race, look at the leaderboard, look for the
               | bottom 2 positions.
               | 
               | That's Haas
        
           | throwawayboise wrote:
           | I'd go along with that. 2nd place == first loser. Bronze is
           | still top 3, more recognition than the rest of the field.
        
         | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
         | I don't have a source, but I think I remember seeing something
         | about this in the context of a study about olympic swimming,
         | back in my swimming days, for what little that's worth.
        
         | darth_avocado wrote:
         | I mean isn't it obvious? Third place is great because you
         | narrowly avoided winning no medals, but second place isn't
         | because you narrowly avoided winning the first place.
        
         | seanalltogether wrote:
         | Yes exactly, the style of competition can certainly affect your
         | perception of the results. For example, in foot race with
         | multiple participants, the silver medalist might be happy with
         | second, because they know they dug in deep and barely beat out
         | the bronze medalist at the finish line. Whereas in archery
         | since you are competing in isolation of the other contestants,
         | the silver medalist might be annoyed that the one shot in round
         | 3 cost them the chance for the gold.
        
         | bumby wrote:
         | I never v thought of it that way, but your reminds me of Daniel
         | Kahneman's work regarding how people remember their own
         | experiences. Regardless of how well things went during the
         | entire duration of the activity, the last experience was
         | disproportionately weighted in terms of framing the memory. In
         | that context, it makes sense why the tournament style silver
         | medalists would be more dissatisfied.
         | 
         | "We suggest that patients' memories of painful medical
         | procedures largely reflect the intensity of pain at the worst
         | part and at the final part of the experience."[1]
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/030439...
        
       | dp-hackernews wrote:
       | Um, isn't that the obvious statement of the century? Perhaps even
       | more obvious than "Computer confirms, gold medalist happier than
       | silver medalist" Of course, silver LOST to gold, and bronze WON
       | something better than nothing...
        
       | petermcneeley wrote:
       | "Are you color blind too Vincent? Its silver. Jerome Morrow was
       | never meant to be one step down on the podium. With all I had
       | going for me I was still just second best." - Gattaca
        
       | omot wrote:
       | I heard something similar for management. In an org chart ICs and
       | very top executives are the happiest. Middle management tend to
       | be the most miserable.
        
         | Cd00d wrote:
         | Interesting. I think middle management is more stressful
         | because your job is to execute on business goal, but your
         | influence is still limited. There's too much out of your
         | control to feel confident in success or that the failures are
         | solely due to your own decision processes.
        
       | whoisjuan wrote:
       | You don't need a study to understand this. Generally speaking
       | getting silver means that you were fighting to get gold and you
       | couldn't make it. Getting bronze means that you were fighting to
       | be in the podium and you made it.
       | 
       | Again, this is a very general appreciation but it's likely the
       | case for most athletes. In the Olympics you already know before
       | hand who is a favorite and who is an underdog. Of course the
       | athletes are self-aware enough to understand this as well.
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | It's only 400 photos. They could have used human beings rather
       | than AI. The result is probably bunkum.
        
         | GloriousKoji wrote:
         | Cornell University already did that over a decade ago so the
         | conclusion that bronze medalist appear happier is probably true
         | as the human and AI models got the same results.
        
       | viztor wrote:
       | People who won Bronze might never thought they were going to win
       | anything at all.
       | 
       | People who win Silver generally went after the Gold.
        
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