Study where people justified an advantage they'd been randomly assigned

December 9, 2020 9:48 AM

I'm looking for a study I read about, probably in the last 10 years, where participants were put in groups and played a game. One player, randomly chosen, was given an advantage like extra start money or an extra die to roll. The researchers found that the person with the advantage would quickly begin to justify their winning by saying they were good at the game or things along those lines.

I'm fairly certain everyone knew about the advantage and that it was randomly assigned. I think that Monopoly might have been the game used but I'm not at all certain of that.

My search-fu is failing because all the search terms I've thought of are pretty generic. "game study psychology advantage justified" etc turn up a LOT of results but most are about video game studies. Feel free to suggest search terms, I already added "-video" which helped a little and writing this has made realize that research would be a good word to add.

Thanks

posted by Awfki to Science & Nature (2 answers total)

Here's the TED talk about the Monopoly study.
posted by shornco at 10:05 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Life’s winners think success was earned even if it was down to luck
posted by paperback version at 9:36 PM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]