So we've thought about how comparisons can be motivating, but they can also have some adverse consequences as well, and here you want to think about some of the bad in comparisons. I'm going to draw on some of the work by Frans de Waal where what he did is he actually studied how capuchin monkeys, very clever monkeys, reacted to unfairness. He taught these monkeys to use stones for money where he gave them stones. Experimenters would come out, open up their hands and receive a stone and then hand the monkey some reward like a slice of cucumber. It turns out these monkeys would engage in this transaction all day long. They love cucumbers and they're happy to hand over the stones. That is, until they see a neighbor, a monkey in a cage next to them, getting something better than a cucumber, like a grape. And here I'll show you a video from one of his studies, where two capuchin monkeys, side by side, are handing over stones, one's getting a cucumber, the other one's getting a grape. We can see what happens. I want to highlight three things about this video. The first is how intensely focused the one capuchin monkey is, the one who's getting the cucumbers, is in looking at what's happening in the cage next door, to his neighbor getting the grape. The second is, I want to focus on how upset this capuchin monkey is. And then third, how this drives this capuchin monkey to exit. That is to not even want to engage in this transaction. Throwing the cucumber and not wanting to participate, where the stone now no longer becomes worth a cucumber. And it's all relative, and it's because some other capuchin monkey is getting a better deal, that this original deal that seemed fine is no longer okay. And it's not just monkeys. I want to argue that we're hard wired to make this comparisons, and these comparisons really influence us. So if you take us to Scott Crabtree, here is somebody who was working for a tech firm. Was perfectly happy with his job, felt motivated, inspired by it. Until they had to go out to the market, they recruited a new hotshot employee. This new employee came in at almost the same salary that he taking years to develop and all of a sudden his work became irritating and he got upset about it. He was so upset, he actually end up quitting. He joined a different firm where he became the Chief Happiness Officer. So just as he capuchin monkeys, Scott Crabtree wouldn't realize that somebody else is getting a deal that seemed better than his, a younger person with almost the same salary, he ended up quitting and leaving and trying to find happiness somewhere else. Now, it's not just individuals. It happens to groups too. And here, American Airlines years ago were facing very tough financial straits. They were on the verge of bankruptcy. They negotiated assiduously with their unions, the pilots' union, the flight attendants, the baggage handlers, the mechanics and they got them to agree to incredible concessions. So unions together, they agree to $1.8 billion concessions. Now, at the same time, the executives at American airlines, they could have left American Airlines for other more stable companies, and they try to retain those executives. And to retain them they were giving them retention bonuses. Now here's the problem. They had offered them $41 million in retention bonuses. There's an SEC filing deadline and this information became public. So just after the unions had agreed to steep concessions, they learned that the executive team was going to end up with these retention bonuses. Well you can imagine, just like the capuchin monkeys, they became furious. So the concessions were acceptable until they found out that somebody else was getting paid a bonus. And the first thing they did is they fired their negotiator, they withdrew these concessions, had to go back to the drawing table to try to and negotiate. So, here's the question. Is a stone worth a cucumber? Are $1.8 billion in concessions reasonable? Am I getting paid a fair salary? And for all of these questions, the answer is, well, it depends, and we have comparisons that inform our answers. Now let's go to the United Kingdom and I think about two brothers, David and Ed Miliband. These are two brothers, they grew up together and they both were members of Parliament in the United Kingdom. And when Gordon Brown stepped down as the head of the Labor Party, they were both vying for leadership. The older brother David first announced that he was going to run for leadership, flanked by 50 members of Parliament. He announced his candidacy and he seemed like the odds-on favorite. There were several other candidates that also threw their hats in the ring in addition to David and Ed, but these were the 2 primary contenders. And as the voting went on, David had a slight edge. So in the first round, David was beating out Ed. In the second round, the same. And the third round, the same. But the gap became a bit narrower. Now to win, you need an outright majority of more, you need more than 50%. And that's exactly what happened in the fourth round. Just the two of them and now all of a sudden Ed wins. Now, two things about this. One, it's a very narrow margin of victory and the counterfactual of something else happening is quite salient. And two, these are brothers. And worse for David, it's the younger brother. Now, what happens is they end up, their relationship ends up fracturing and David talks about the permanent invidious comparison made professional life impossible. He not only leaves Parliament, he actually leaves the United Kingdom. He leaves to work at a nonprofit in New York. So here this comparison is driving him crazy. Now, for similar reasons, we can think about twins. Now, one idea is you think, well, what's an artificial twin? An artificial twin is adopting someone that's similar, in age, to a biological son or daughter. Now, what'd be great about it is you have a built in playmate. There's an economies of scale, there's one carpool, you have one school, you can have one soccer drop off, it could be great. And yet, adoption experts say in a majority leader argues against the corrosive social comparisons that are created by artificial twins. That is by doing this, there's always going to be some twin, one of those twins, that's going to be out ahead of the other. There could be developmental differences and that constant comparison is going to make artificial twins really toxic. And so many agencies not only counsel but almost prohibit the adoption of artificial twins. Now, let's think about something else, let's think about doing better but feeling worse. How could that happen? Now again, it's going to be comparisons that help us unlock this puzzle. Let's think about Abel Kiviat, he was a silver medalist in 1912. In this Olympics, it's the first Olympics where they used a photo finish to determine who had won and by tenth of a second, he came in second. This was 1912. Now here's an interview he gave, in 1990, almost 80 years later. He talks about waking up thinking what the heck happened. He's languishing and the intense counterfactual of had he only run just a bit faster, he could've come in first. It turns out that this intense feeling is not just unique to Abel. It's actually incredibly prominent where you see silver medalists chronically express dissatisfaction. A couple of academic articles have studied this, even terming this the silver medal face, where you have silver medalists who look downright distraught, really unhappy. And in fact by contrast you see bronze medalist who end up looking much happier than their silver medal counterparts. So in this study almost all the gold medalist are smiling. But the bronze medalist are smiling a little bit less often. But in these studies, none of the silver medalist were smiling. If you think about these comparisons, the silver medalists, like Abel, are comparing themselves to the gold medalists that would've been a lot better. When you compare silver to bronze, they're kind of similar. But the bronze medalists, if silver is kind of close, that's not a very big upward comparison. But to 4th place, that's a chasm. There you're just an athlete, not a medalist and so the bronze medalist are delighted to have escaped that other fate. So, we see this doing better but feeling worse phenomenon in these medalists where silver medalists are often downright miserable. So, here we can think about this important lesson where comparisons can drive us, they can motivate us, but they can also make us perfectly miserable.
