Psychologists reveal the “opposer’s loss effect”: Framing preferences in opposition makes losses feel worse

A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has found that people who form their preferences based more on opposing an alternative than supporting a favorite react more negatively when outcomes don’t go their way. Whether in elections or sports, individuals who said they preferred a side because they disliked the opponent—rather than liking their own choice—tended to respond more negatively when their preferred option lost. This pattern, which researchers call the “opposer’s loss effect,” held true across a series of studies using both real-world and experimental data.

The researchers were motivated by a simple but puzzling question: why do some people get more upset than others when experiencing the same disappointing event? Co-author Jacob Teeny, an assistant professor of marketing at Northwestern University, was inspired by observing how differently people react to their favorite teams or political candidates losing.

“I always thought it was confusing when two people both said they loved the same sports team or political candidate, and then after something bad happened, like that team or candidate lost, some people would be so much more upset than others,” Teeny explained. “I wasn’t exactly sure how to research the topic until I stumbled upon this paper on support-oppose framing (originally called valence framing). I ran an exploratory study on a realistic but fictional student election, not sure what I would find, framing some students’ preference between candidates in terms of support or opposition. Interestingly, no matter the framing, both sets of participants preferred the same candidate to the same degree. However, after I revealed that their preferred candidate had lost, the opposition-framed people were significantly more negative toward the outcome.”

The researchers conducted several studies using a combination of real-world data, longitudinal surveys, and controlled experiments. In their first study, they surveyed 234 voters from Ohio and Georgia just before their 2018 gubernatorial elections, asking how much they preferred one candidate over the other and whether their preference was based more on support or opposition. Two days after the election, they followed up with participants whose candidate had lost.

Even among voters who expressed the same strength of preference, those whose preference was rooted in opposition to the other candidate reacted more negatively to the loss than those who said their preference was based on support.

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The second study applied the same idea to football fans ahead of the 2019 Super Bowl. The researchers surveyed 404 fans of the Rams and Patriots before the game, then recontacted Rams fans after the team lost. Again, those who had framed their team preference in terms of opposition to the other team (the Patriots) reported more negative reactions than those who framed their preference in support of the Rams—even though both groups said they preferred the Rams to the same degree.

To rule out other explanations and directly test causality, the researchers then ran controlled experiments. In one study with 111 college students, participants were asked to choose between two videos: a popular advertisement compilation and a dishwasher tutorial. Everyone preferred the ad video, but participants were randomly assigned to focus either on why they liked the ad video (support framing) or why they disliked the tutorial video (opposition framing). When told they would be watching the less preferred video, those in the opposition condition reported stronger negative reactions and were quicker to stop watching.

In another experiment with 151 adults on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform, participants selected a preferred online task and were then told the task had unexpected downsides. Again, those who had framed their preference in opposition reacted more negatively and were more likely to report antagonistic intentions, such as leaving a bad review.

These patterns remained consistent across several studies, even when the undesired outcome was not a loss, but a disappointment—such as discovering that a supposedly better product or job option turned out to be worse than expected. The researchers also examined potential mechanisms behind the effect and found that people who framed their preferences in opposition tended to feel less ambivalent about their choice. That is, they were less likely to see the upsides of the other option or the downsides of their own. As a result, when their chosen outcome failed or disappointed them, they were less able to find a silver lining.

In further studies, Teeny and his colleagues tested this effect in more natural settings. One study analyzed tweets before and after the 2012 Super Bowl, using artificial intelligence to categorize whether fans expressed support for their team or opposition to the other. Those who tweeted in opposition to the rival team used more negative language after the game if their side lost.

Another study drew from national surveys conducted during the 2008 to 2020 United States presidential elections. Using participants’ warmth ratings toward each candidate, the researchers calculated whether voters’ preferences were rooted more in support or opposition. In every election, voters who based their preferences more on opposition to the losing candidate felt less satisfied with democracy after the election—even when compared to voters with equally strong preferences rooted in support.

Importantly, none of the studies found that opposition-framed preferences were stronger at the start. People who preferred something because they disliked the alternative were not more passionate overall than those who preferred it because they liked it. But they did react more strongly to unwanted outcomes.

“How you think about the basis for your preference matters — both before the event and afterward,” Teeny told PsyPost. “Whether it’s a financial investment, a sports game, a health-based decision, or many other things, if you think about your preference in terms of the option you oppose versus the option you support, it can lead you to react more negatively to relevant, unwelcome news.”

The effect wasn’t large—about a third of a standard deviation on average—but it was reliable across different contexts, including sports, consumer decisions, and politics. It also seemed to have behavioral consequences: people who reacted more negatively were more likely to disengage, retaliate, or badmouth those responsible for the disappointing outcome.

“We were a little surprised by how robust the effect was,” Teeny said. “We ran a bunch of different experiments in different contexts, and the basic “opposer’s loss effect” continued to receive support. There really seems to be something about conceiving a preference in terms of an opposition frame that can really amplify a person’s negativity toward an undesired outcome.”

The researchers also identified potential boundaries for the effect. In studies testing personality differences, people who were already more comfortable with emotional complexity or regularly experienced mixed feelings were less affected by opposition framing. For example, those high in dialectical thinking—a style associated with East Asian cultures—did not show the same increase in negativity when their opposition-framed preferences were thwarted.

As with any psychological research, there are limitations. All of the participants were based in the United States, so it’s unclear how these results might generalize across cultures. And while the researchers used a variety of methods to assess support versus opposition framing, some relied on self-report, which can be subject to bias.

Despite these limitations, the implications are noteworthy, especially in politics and advertising, where campaigns often emphasize opposition to the other side.

“A lot of advertising and messaging frames their content in terms of support for the preferred option or opposition to the nonpreferred one — especially politics,” Teeny told PsyPost. “From other research, opposition framing, relative to support framing, can lead to stronger opinions, meaning opposition-framed opinions are more resistant to changing and more likely to guide behavior. However, our research highlights a potential downside of doing that. If those preferences are ultimately thwarted — a political candidate loses, a competitor’s product outperforms the purchased one — people are going to react more negatively.”

The study, “Reactions to Undesired Outcomes: Evidence for the Opposer’s Loss Effect,” was authored by Jacob D. Teeny and Richard E. Petty.