the evolutionary benefit of being a loser.

Winner—Loser effects are one of my favourite things in psychology/animal behaviour! I got the chance to work on a project studying them in a human experiment using video games last summer, which was pretty cool. Anyways, I explained Winner and Loser effects the best I could here! Let me know how you think they affect us. Thanks for watching.

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REFERENCES FOR THIS VIDEO (not all that I used):
my university classes lol

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Hi! I’m Dan. I’m double majoring in Biology and Psychology, hoping to go into Psychotherapy. I have a lot of thoughts and need creative outlets at all times, so making these videos is a great way to cope with the struggle of indefinite existence! For now, I'm focusing on scientific content, in a commentary-ish style, but who knows where I'll go from here. I plan to stick around on YouTube for a while, so I hope to see you around for years to come! :))

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#animals #evolution #psychology

[bigheadrhino]

I think a big issue that we are adapting to in this day in age is that social media has made competition pools way too big. The feeling of winning and losing is entirely contextual. If you are on a remote island and you are a winner amongst 5 other people, and you have 10 coconuts, it doesn’t matter that across the ocean someone else has a million coconuts because you don’t know that person exists. You still feel like a winner. If you are the strongest when you wrestle around in your friend group, it doesn’t matter than there are a million trained wrestlers in the world that would beat the tar out of you. In the past if you lose too much in one niche you can move on to another one. Now with social media, everything we do can be compared to all the best people in the world, only a tiny fraction of people can truly be “winners.” I think people in general need to be more cognizant of the contextual nature of how we feel and control our environment and what we expose ourselves to. Avoiding competition entirely probably isn’t healthy but constantly comparing yourself to people who you will never realistically “win” against probably isn’t good for you either.

[rtfuldodger]

I didn't expect this channel to be so small, this is some high quality stuff

[deepsea]

Maybe we’re all depressed and anxious because we can’t seem to win out here 😂

[gameking]

This was true for me in college math. Messing up even after checking my steps really lowered my test confidence, and that spilled out to some other classes later on.

[gerardoherreraMC]

I finally realized that all the things we go through are more mental then physical

[Oxtrooo]

I think a large part of winning and losing being a spectrum for humans, is that it allows us to organize into niches we are good at.

Think about it, your stone age grandma might make a sick mammoth coat, but she sucks at hunting deer. So she gave up on hunting deer and stays in the camp and makes amazing clothes for everyone to wear. Same thing with glass joe, he might also be bad at actually killing deer, but he is good at remembering what the footprints and fecal matter looks like, so he can get "chad" to the deer so he can throw the spear and kill it.

So instead of your grandma and glass joe trying over and over to hunt deer, they accept they aren't very good at killing deer and leave it up to chad to do it who has a 17 kill streak.

[maryamkhan]

6:33 what you experience as a baby does affect your mentality in later life too. I remember a lot of things that happened in kindergarten that still shapes my behaviour today. One instance from my experience is the ability to make friends but difficulty in retaining them. One girl in kindergarten had said she didn't want to be friends with me anymore because she was jealous I had so many. Just like that, I lost a lot of friends in later years because I "lost" against a close and familiar person in kindergarten.

[alyantza]

Adapting is one of the tools we are good at using to switch from being loser to a winner. Through finding niches and changing our own personal "quest objectives", we can all gain confidence in our abilities. Instead of following a preset societal norm, we all become winners in our own way.

[leightonolsson]

It's interesting that this phenomenon doesn't just effect social animals.

[appa]

Winners and losers are social constructs. They're social constructs a billion years in the making.

[propelledgaming]

Why did I read the title as the evolutionary benefit of being a lobster, I really thought this was gonna be some meta commentary on why lobsters are superior to humans

[ffrreeddyy]

Bro, thank you for this. 29 yo trying to grow up and realizing I’ve never accepted adulthood responsibilities on my own cuz I’ve been beaten down from life and before that my parents beat me down so I wasn’t prepared in the first place. I didn’t realize I was focused on survival and learning from my mistake. I did things differently to cope with my home life and others would punish me for it so I slowly learnt the hard way to be normal. I’m figuring out why more and more. My father didn’t have a father and he is a loser, he was mentally messed up or sad and not confident or happy from “winning” or being successful in his goals. And he took it out on me and us and ruined everyone and split us all up blindly and selfishly. I tried to compete and fix things and ask him to not put me down or to be equal and hear out my logic which was sound and not act on his emotions of being upset that it’s not his way. So he trained me to not upset him or maybe to put me down so he felt like he won against me, the only person he could in his life. And I developed traits to lose. I tried to fix myself or avoid it but I couldn’t and then I was struggling in the real world and they further put me down to fail and I was really depressed and trying to survive alone and not hurt others by being a failure and I’m slowly able to not be so unhealthy. Im working on eating everyday, not being afraid, and sleeping during the night. I want to be successful it’s just so slow for me to work out so much and still balance normal life stuff and relationships with family or people who need my help.

[raphlvlogs]

you may have to lose many times before you can win but can you afford to lose is another issue

[r.a.acosta]

My gosh, this channel always teaches me something new and interesting! The Mosquito Fish information was incredible, and the fact that human anxiety medication works on Crayfish... is cray-zy! ...

Okay, I'll stop. Excellent video as always, (superb work tying it together with the prior video on spectrums in science, too.) 👏

[harryb]

I’ve always considered it similar to the placebo effect. If you think you win a lot you start to win a lot.

[chrisrubin]

Even with Elephant Seals as an example, a smaller male who does not challenge the alpha is more likely to live long enough to sneaky in a few breedings, than an agressive smaller male who is crushed to death.










Although my nature documentary was futurama so, ynow grain of salt and all that lol.

[ZainPlayzYT-wfsf]

matter a fact, this whole channel is underrated! 💯😞

[bronga]

well you won my heart.
and i love neuro science please keep it going, im sure that because of people like you who comunicate science to the masses, we will be more and more logical and rational as a species because of the domino effect as you see the effect the internet had on us as a whole, the number of technological advancess is getting bigger and bigger from year to year we find more out about almost every facet of life and the world we live in. Thank you

[shinobiighost]

I've been aware of this psychological state of losing but never had a word for it. In volleyball when my team lost a bunch of points in sequence they'd start putting less effort and being mopey, especially if the opponent started flexing. It was a very frustrating hold to break out of.

[abelvillalobosj]

Now it all makes sense, I stood up to my bully in high school and got beat up and I have been a loser ever since, I'm currently 26 years old, I'm lonely and depressed all the time, I have been trying to seek help but it feels like nothing is ever going to change, my mentallity is already ruined.