By When Doing Better Means Feeling Worse by Michael Warshaw Professor of organizational behavior, Victoria Husted Medvec, explains why coming in third feels worse than placing second. Answering that question means reckoning with what you've achieved, with the price you've paid, and with the balance between the two. Many people's lives feel out of control because the cost of their success is too high. They work on assignments they don't like, they work with jerks, or they're just always working. That's not always the case.
People determine how satisfied they feel by the comparisons they make.
Medvec's best-known research involves the Olympics. She and some colleagues studied the reactions of U.S. athletes to the medals they had won. Doing better can actually mean feeling worse. Bronze medalists think about how lucky they are to have a medal at all. Thinking about these cutoff points can wreak havoc on our sense of self-worth.