Say Cheese: An Analysis of Olympic Medalists’ Smiles

Past research has shown that counterfactual thinking heavily influences Olympic medalists’ displays of emotion, that is, a comparison between medalists’ actual finish and what could have been. Follow up research suggested that these results weren't influenced by thinking about what could have been, but rather the counterfactual expectations they had set for themselves. Our research aimed to clarify which, if either, of these factors actually influenced medalists' emotions. We collected photographs of athletes on the medal stand from the Olympic Multimedia Library and Getty Images, and used Facet facial encoding software to analyze the athletes' emotions. We found that both factors have importance when controlled for, and other variables, like race and gender, also influence medalists' displays of emotions.