Bronze beats silver, and other surprises from Olympic studies

Previous research has found lackluster economic benefits from hosting mega-events such as the Olympics. New research suggests that the disruptions in the host city - or at least the perception of disruptions - are actually a major boon to competing locales. In 2002, the year Utah hosted the Winter Olympics, counties with ski resorts in Colorado netted an additional $160 million in retail sales, according to sales-tax data. Even a pre-Olympics survey by tourism officials in Utah found that "[n]early 50 percent of nonresident skiers indicated that they would not consider skiing in Utah during 2002."

Leeds, M., "Do Good Olympics Make Good Neighbors?" Contemporary Economic Policy (July 2008).

When you hear someone say that a news story (e.g., the Olympics) is "sucking up all the oxygen," you should take that a little more literally. A recent study examined how the timing of 5,000 natural disasters that occurred between 1968 and 2002 correlated with help from the United States Agency for International Development's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Disasters that happened around the Olympics (or on other days with dominant news stories) were less likely to get news attention and, thus, less likely to receive assistance. The analysis suggests that a disaster happening around the Olympics must have three times as many casualties to have the same chance of receiving assistance as a similar catastrophe. Meanwhile, disasters with the same casualty level are not covered equally, even on comparable news days. For every person who dies in a volcano disaster, 38,920 people must die of famine to get the same coverage; for every person who dies in Europe, 45 people must die in Africa.

Eisensee, T. and Stromberg, D., "News Droughts, News Floods, and U.S. Disaster Relief," Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 2007).

. . .

Research suggests that male and female Olympic athletes are covered differently on TV because of their appearance. How do women fare in newspapers? Clemson University researchers catalogued the bylines, content, and sources for all articles covering the 2004 Athens Olympics in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Male journalists wrote almost two-thirds of the articles, including more than 80 percent of basketball articles (even though the US women's team won the gold medal to the men's bronze), soccer articles (even though the women's team was more prominent), and volleyball articles, and the majority of the swimming and softball articles. Only in gymnastics were there more female-authored articles. Also, male sources were quoted more frequently, and earlier, in about two-thirds of the articles. Surprisingly, female reporters quoted female sources as little as, or even less than, male reporters did.

Denham, B. and Cook, A., "Byline Gender and News Source Selection: Coverage of the 2004 Summer Olympics" Journal of Sports Media (Spring 2006).

. . .

Bias in Olympic coverage can also arise in the comments of TV personalities. Another study out of Clemson catalogued all commentary by NBC-affiliated personalities during the network's prime-time coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics. Not only were men covered and mentioned more extensively (even when the women were more successful), but attributions of success and failure differed by gender, too. Male athletes were seen as more composed and intelligent in victory, and less committed in defeat. Female athletes were seen as more courageous in victory, and weaker athletes in defeat. The differences were more prevalent among on-site reporters than among the (more scripted) anchors. A similar pattern was found with regard to nationality. Americans were seen as having more concentration, composure, commitment, and courage in victory, while non-Americans were granted more athletic skill. The authors note that "parallels between long-held racial stereotypes (e.g., blacks being 'born' athletes and whites being superior intellectually) may transfer in similar ways within the domain of nationalism."

Billings, A. et al., "The Games Through the NBC Lens: Gender, Ethnic, and National Equity in the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media (June 2008).

. . .

After the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, a team of psychologists published a widely cited study showing that Olympic athletes who had just won a bronze medal appeared to be happier than those who had just won a silver medal. The psychologists concluded that athletes' emotional responses were not explained by missed expectations but, instead, by close-call counterfactuals: Bronze-medal winners were focused on the fact that they had come close to not winning a medal at all, while the silver-medal winners were focused on the fact that they had come close to winning a gold medal. After the 2000 Sydney Olympics, another team of psychologists updated these findings with a renewed emphasis on the role of prior expectations. They repeated the earlier study - but this time with Sydney athletes, and not just with bronze- and silver-medal winners - and found that performance, relative to media predictions or qualifying-event finishes, was the primary determinant of athletes' emotions.

McGraw, P. et al., "Expectations and Emotions of Olympic Athletes," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (July 2005).

Kevin Lewis is an Ideas columnist. He can be reached at kevin.lewis.ideas@gmail.com.