The United States elections are taking longer than usual.
The count usually lasts around a month, but the same night it is usually more or less clear who is going to win, and one of the two candidates accepts his defeat and congratulates the new president.
In contrast, Donald Trump has not yet admitted that Joe Biden has a majority.
In fact, it has started a legal battle, launching fraud allegations so far without any proof.
Of course, it is possible that the president has evidence of this fraud and has not yet made it public.
But for now, it seems that he is not gracefully admitting defeat.
Bad losers don't have a good reputation.
Nobody likes those people who get angry and blame the referee or accuse others of cheating.
Why is it so hard sometimes to admit defeat?
And is there anything we can do to be better losers?
Why does it bother us so much to lose
No one likes to lose.
Even if some of us are used to it.
You don't have to be a narcissist or give yourself five stars in all self-criticism for us to know badly to fit three goals or suffer a checkmate in less than twenty movements.
And that is not to mention when we face serious setbacks that we can come to see as defeats (although not always are), such as not achieving the job to which we aspired or not getting a second term as president of the United States.
For starters, winning has nice effects.
As Yolanda Cuevas, a psychologist specializing in health and sports, explains, testosterone levels are higher when we win, both in men and women, and this "makes us feel powerful and powerful."
When we win, dopamine is also released, a neurotransmitter that participates in the function of "reward for pleasant stimuli."
Instead, when we get a metaphorical beating, the same areas of the brain are activated that are activated when we receive a physical blow.
And we don't even have to play ourselves: these effects are similar when the soccer team with which we identify wins or loses and also if “our” political party loses.
Although the response to politics is usually more complex ... "in principle", explains Enrique García Huete, director of Quality Psicólogos and professor at the Cardenal Cisneros University of Madrid.
In fact, we are hardwired to avoid defeat.
As Daniel Kahneman writes in
Think Fast, Think Slow
, our aversion to loss far outweighs our inclination to profit.
For example, Kahneman and his main collaborator, Amos Tversky, in one of their experiments proposed a bet with a coin: if tails were rolled, the participants lost 100 dollars;
if it came heads, they won 150. Although the bet seemed advantageous, most people rejected it.
When did we start accepting these types of bets?
"For many people, the answer is about $ 200, twice the value of the loss."
The average aversion ratio is between 1.5 and 2.5 ($ 150-250 in the example).
How do we learn to lose
Although tolerance for frustration depends in part on our personality, we also learn to lose as children.
First, with the example that our families give us, explains García Huete.
After being defeated in a soccer match, it is not the same as our parents cheering us on or shouting like madmen at the referee.
Yolanda Cuevas agrees, who recalls that games help children to manage emotions such as “frustration, sadness, anger”.
That is why he recommends that parents do not always let their children win: “These moments are opportunities to recognize, validate, accompany those emotions.
Knowing how I can improve, how I will do it at another time, being happy for the other person… ”, in addition to highlighting the good time spent with the family.
Nor should we belittle those who have lost, of course: "It is about learning to be competitive with yourself and not obsessing over others".
This not only undermines self-esteem, but can generate in the long run "a lot of pressure, perfectionism and self-demand."
There are also bad winners: "Sometimes self-demand and lack of self-esteem make you want more and more," Cuevas recalls.
Similarly, what we learn in class influences.
As García Huete explains, we manage frustration better when the educational model is based on supporting or encouraging the student and worse when it focuses on punishments.
Unfortunately, we don't just lose children to board games: losing is part of our lives (in general, of course, we do not rule out that George Clooney has no idea what we are talking about).
García Huete reminds us that it is important to learn from these defeats to train our resilience, our ability to overcome and adapt to new scenarios.
Sometimes we will need the support of family and friends, and sometimes we can turn to a psychologist to provide us with the necessary tools to face these situations, working on our self-esteem when necessary.
For example, García Huete explains that people come to his office for whom everything has gone well in life and when they face a first serious loss (such as a layoff or divorce) they need help from a professional.
Stewie still doesn't know that her medal is just for participating
Try again
When we face a significant loss, we must be able to develop a life plan to deal with it, explains García Huete.
For example, if we have been without promotion or without a second term as presidents of the United States, we should evaluate what we have lost and analyze the expectations we had in that part of our lives.
That way we will know how we have to move on without what we took practically for granted.
This psychologist points out that there are people with less capacity for self-criticism who do not assume their share of responsibility after having lost.
Of course, sometimes bad things happen to us without our having anything to do with it (for example, if we are left without work due to the pandemic).
But there are those who always blame everything on others (“they cheat”) or the circumstances (“I had the sun in front of me and I couldn't see the ball”), without admitting that they could have tried harder or that they simply didn't they are only as good as their opponents.
There may also be people with a profile close to narcissism whose insecurity makes them value themselves only for their successes, which helps them to demonstrate their status and achieve recognition from others.
These people have a worse time with any setback.
In this sense, Cuevas recommends that we do not see everything in our lives as a competition: "We need to recover the culture of effort and sacrifice" and not expect "results in 24 hours, in a society that wants everything now."
In fact, a defeat does not always mean that we can never achieve something, but that we have to try again.
The psychologist proposes a series of tools that can help us recover more quickly.
These skills include the recognition of our emotions during a specific time, without "covered in complaint and bitterness."
Also recognize what we did well and what we can improve, in addition to accepting that error is part of our lives.
And finally, give us more opportunities, taking into account that we start with more experience for these new attempts.
That is to say, and to continue with the example of the beginning, Trump could appear again in 2024 with the lesson learned.
And here we will not go into whether this is a good or bad thing.
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