A study reveals that the winners of a competition behave more aggressively towards the losers than the other way around. The work, published in the journal Social Psychological Personality Science , is the first to examine the behavior of competitors towards the people they confront.
The researchers conducted three experiments with students from France and the United States, which consisted of different tests in which they had to compete with adversaries that did not really exist. After the first test, half of the participants were told that they had won and the other half that they had lost. In a second trial, those who lost received a "punishment" such as drinking a spicy soda or hearing a shrill sound. Participants could decide both the amount of spiciness and the intensity and duration of the sound that their opponents would receive. The results showed that those who supposedly had won in the previous test added more spice to the drink and subjected their opponents to louder sounds than those who had lost.
"It seems that people have a tendency to trample on those they have defeated," explain the authors, from Ohio University. "The losers, however, do not react more aggressively than usual against those who have beaten them." The next step, they indicate, will be to study if the winners are aggressive only with the people they have defeated, or if they maintain this behavior with everyone.
