 Faster, higher, stronger… and happier? Relative achievement and marginal rank effectsPaul Dolan, Chloe Foy, Georgios Kavetsos and Laura Kudrna Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2021, vol. 95, issue C Abstract: Most prior research on the relationship between relative attainment and subjective wellbeing focuses on relative income. The direction of this relationship may, however, be positive or negative. Defining the target comparison group can be challenging. This study focuses on a sample where ‘relative others’ are especially salient – Olympic athletes – and investigates relative achievement using a different ‘currency’ – medals. While prior research shows that bronze are happier than silver medallists, we find no difference unless there is a relatively close race at the bottom of the podium in the competition between silver, bronze, and fourth. A nuanced distributional approach can be used to explore marginal rank effects. Keywords: Happiness; Relative status; Counterfactual thinking; Olympic games (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:95:y:2021:i:c:s2214804321001014 DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2021.101761 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier |
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