People Hate a Winner
Success breeds envy. Here’s the psychology and sociology behind why people resent winners, and why you should resist
“They win too much.”
It didn’t take more than 3 Super Bowl victories for people to start reacting that way when I said my favorite football team was the Kansas City Chiefs.
Some who don’t know I’m from that area even smirk and ask, “Is it because you’re a Swiftie?” I’m not saying I think Taylor Swift is the greatest songwriter to ever live, but she is definitely not worth the condescension that drips from the word Swiftie when I’ve heard it in that context.
I should have seen this day coming. Before the victory lap taken by Patrick Mahomes in recent years with the Kansas City Chiefs, there was another villain: Tom Brady. With 7 Super Bowls to his name and a team that seemed unstoppable, people loved to hate him. And before Taylor Swift, there was Beyoncé. Too successful, too rich, too good at maintaining her privacy and image in a way most other stars can’t seem to manage.
Here’s the hard truth: people hate a winner. Here’s a harder one: it’s not really their fault.
In 1954, psychologist Leon Festinger proposed the Social Comparison Theory. Essentially, we evaluate our own worth by comparing ourselves to others. And when it comes to those “above” us because they’re richer, smarter, have better homes than us, study after study has reaffirmed that rather than inspiring motivation, it brings envy.
And envy isn’t just emotional, it’s neurological.
When scientists scanned people’s brains, they found that reading about another person doing well lit up the pain center. That means envy caused a similar reaction to a physical injury. And when that person read about a disaster befalling the subject of their envy, the pleasure centers lit up. It was like a reward (or relief) to hear about their misfortune.
It’s a response that's evolutionarily hardwired into us. Rob Henderson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, describes this phenomenon on his Substack:
“In hunter-gatherer groups, sometimes an assertive alpha type arises who attempts to exert dominance on the rest of the community. The subordinates unite against him. The weak combine forces with one another to dominate those who have the strength and desire to dominate the others. This model worked for as long as humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Which is most of human history.”
With this kind of behavior ingrained in us, it makes sense why we would resent people who ascend too quickly or shine too bright. It threatens the norm.
And even though we are no longer living in hunter-gatherer tribes, domination still threatens our personal lives today. If we believe Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory, it means that our brains tell us that people doing better than we are means we are simply “less than.”
Either we have to embrace that, or come up with a reason why they are an anomaly. The easier psychological decision is to diminish the winner.
“She isn’t talented; her music is overrated, and the girls who love her are silly.”
“His team isn’t good; they just get lucky.”
Then, when the inevitable mistake or backlash comes, it’s proof that we were right all along. Our own egos are safe. And we get a little boost in our brain’s pleasure center. Even better.
And when someone just keeps on winning with seemingly no end in sight? That’s when the resentment starts to kick in. People hate a winner because it threatens their sense of how the world is supposed to work and their own status within it.
But just because our brains are hardwired to be one way doesn’t mean we have to give in.
In fact, it’s in our best interest not to give in.
Because, as much as it might be nice to believe these people are successful out of mere luck or cheating, in many cases, that isn’t true. At least not for 100% of their success.
In many cases, if we were willing to put in the long, debilitating hours they did, give up the relationships they did, and put our everything into what we wanted, we could achieve something at least close to it. And the more time we spend hating the winners, the less time we have to learn from them.
And the less time we have to become winners ourselves.
So the next time you see someone doing better than you, and your hunter-gatherer brain starts thinking “They don’t deserve it,” or “It’s just pure luck,” try instead shifting to “What could I learn from them? What have they done that I could imitate or learn from?”