Thrill of victory: Success among many feels better

ANN ARBOR-Success feels good, but it is better when people win in big groups-even if the chance of success is the same, a new University of Michigan report indicates. Researchers found that people feel happier and more satisfied if their accomplishment is against competitors in larger groups than identical success among smaller groups. "Success among larger pools is associated with more positive emotional reactions because people perceive the performance as more indicative of real superiority," said Ed O'Brien, the study's lead author and a U-M doctoral student in social psychology. In other words, the win against many competitors represents their "true" abilities, not an outcome that might be described as a "fluke" with fewer individuals seeking victory, O'Brien said. O'Brien and Linda Hagen, a doctoral student in marketing at U-M's Ross School of Business, conducted five studies to understand people's reaction to victories depending on the number of competitors in different scenarios, holding constant the chance of success. In one experiment, participants read about a runner who placed in the top 10 percent of a race with few (20) or many (20,000) competitors, and estimated how happy he felt. They also rated how prestigious they thought the race was.