Winners and Losers and Tabasco Sauce

I’m always amazed when I read such studies as the following one.  It causes me to fight back the urge to hit myself in the head and yell “What kind of life have you led to think this subject is worth studying?” As always my extremely valuable insights are provided in italics.

Winners Become More Aggressive Toward the Losers

In this world, there are winners and losers - and, for your own safety, it is best to fear the winners.

What more motivation do you need to try and be a winner other than your own safety?

A new study found that winners acted more aggressively against the people they beat than losers did against the victors.

What did they expect?  After losing a sports game do you ever see members of the losing team going to the winning team and yelling “Yeah, we lost, but you couldn’t lose like us if you tried to lose.  You’re going to have to work hard to keep winning and we don’t have to do anything to keep losing.  Bet you’re jealous now.”

"It seems that people have a tendency to stomp down on those they have defeated, to really rub it in," said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University.

"Losers, on the other hand, don't really act any more aggressively than normal against those who defeated them."

(Sarcasm Alert)  What a surprise.  I bet Brad has been stomped down a bit and is out to even the score with those who did the stomping.  Will this lead to sensitivity training for winners?  Maybe Brad will do a study to prove all winners suffer from “Loserphobia.”

Bushman said this is the first study to examine whether winners or losers were more likely to act aggressively.

Unless he comes across a crazy person or a government bureaucrat who has way too much money to spend, let’s hope this is the last time such a study is done. 

Bushman conducted the study with three French scholars.

Why am I not surprised the French are involved?

They conducted three related studies.  The first involved 103 American college students who were told they would be paired with a partner they would be competing against on two tasks.  (In actuality, there was no partner)  In the first task, participants were shown patterns of simple shapes on a computer screen for just a fraction of a second and they had to decide whether a dollar sign was present or absent.

I bet business majors would do better at this than someone studying liberal arts.

After 80 trials, all students were told their scores. Half of them were told they did better than their supposed partner, and half were told they did worse. In other words, half were winners and half were losers.

I don’t think computerized dollar sign detection is ever going to be an Olympic sport.

The second task was a competitive reaction time task.  Participants were told that they and their partner (supposedly the same person they competed against in the first task) would have to press a button as fast as possible on each of the 25 trials and whoever was slower would receive a blast of noise through headphones.

I’m sure with the right training of thumb usage all thing would be possible here.  Never underestimate the power of button pressing training.

The winner of the task would decide how loud the blast would be and how long it would last.

Results showed that participants who won in the first competition blasted their partners longer and louder than did those who lost the competition.

(Sarcasm Alert)  Oh, give them a break.  After all the training it took for them to be able to detect computerized dollar signs and quickly press buttons they’re entitled to let off a little steam. 

So in a second study, conducted with 34 French college students, the researchers repeated the same experiment, except researchers, told participants who did well on the first task, they did not necessarily perform well on the second.  The results were the same.

Maybe the results were the same but I bet the French students had a better wine selection and tastier food choices than their American counterparts. 

A third study, involving 72 French college students with one group told their partner did better than they did on the first competitive task.  One group was told their partner did worse. There was also a third group told there was a computer error during the first task and they couldn't tell who the winner was.

After this was over I bet the French students who participated wished they’d signed up for the sex research studies.

This study also used a different measure of aggression.  Participants were then told they were randomly assigned to drink a sweet beverage and their partner was assigned to drink a tomato juice beverage.  Participants were told they could add Tabasco sauce and salt to their partner's beverage - which they knew their partner strongly disliked from the food preference form.

I bet they totally ignored the requests for vodka to be added to the drinks.  Don’t they understand these are college students?

Results showed that participants who were winners in the first task added more Tabasco sauce and salt to their partner's drink than losers did.

The real lesson here is to not let winners make drinks for losers.  I didn’t need this study to know this is a bad idea.  I bet if you’re a winner you might have a bit of an attitude being forced to make a drink for a loser. 

Bushman said the fact that the findings were repeated in three different studies in two different countries suggest that there really is something about winning that makes people more aggressive.

I think there something about a study like this actually being conducted that makes people more aggressive.  I need to talk to whoever funded this and tell them my financial needs.  How hard could it possibly be to get money from those people?

The next step, he said, is to find out if winners act more aggressively toward everyone, or just toward people they defeat.

I think the next step is to figure out where Brad’s been during his life.  I have to wonder if Brad’s obsession with the aggression of winners is based on his deep feeling he spends too much time doing studies  Maybe he’s just a “Winnerphobic” who needs to go to sensitivity training.

Here is a link to the article

https://news.osu.edu/winning-makes-people-more-aggressive-toward-the-defeated---ohio-state-research-and-innovation-communications/

If You Like My Humor You'll Love My Books. $2.99 Kindle Versions Available