In new study, psychologists found that older people see the world as less win-lose than younger people.
On Super Bowl Sunday, two teams take the field but only one will emerge victorious, Vince Lombardi Trophy in hand. In a presidential election, only one candidate can win enough votes to take the nation’s highest office.
A zero-sum belief is the idea that for me to win, you must lose (and vice versa).
However, psychologists have found that people tend to perceive non-zero-sum situations—such as the economy or classroom learning—as win-lose when they aren’t.
The new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that as people age, this tendency decreases. Older people hold fewer zero-sum beliefs and are generally more positive thinkers than younger people.
The University of Chicago research team and sociologist Tamar Kricheli-Katz, a professor at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Law, also discovered that younger people today are even more prone to zero-sum thinking than previous generations.
“These findings show how differently people can view reality or the world depending on something as simple as their age,” says lead author Veronica Vazquez-Olivieri, PhD’24. “This points to a huge bias in our decision making.”
It’s important to know when a situation is zero-sum. Ahead of a reality competition baking show or election, you can prepare and fundraise appropriately.
However, according to psychologists, there is danger in perceiving a situation as competitive when it’s not—something humans are prone to do.
“You want to identify situations that are zero-sum as zero-sum and avoid identifying situations that are not zero-sum as zero-sum. And people systematically do the opposite,” says study coauthor UChicago Professor Boaz Keysar, “especially if they are young.”
For example, immigrants are often perceived—or framed by politicians—as hurting the economy or taking away jobs.
“It is documented that this is really false, both in the United States and in Europe. If anything, it’s exactly the opposite,” Keysar says. “Immigrants actually contribute to the economy so that there are more jobs for other people. In other words, they enlarge the pie, as opposed to taking away from others.”
Age-related differences in zero-sum beliefs caught Vazquez-Olivieri’s eye while working on her doctoral dissertation.
“I’ve always been fascinated by how social factors, like language or age, impact your decision-making and your behavior,” says Vazquez-Olivieri, who also worked in Keysar’s Multilingualism and Decision-Making Lab.
Vazquez-Olivieri first noticed the pattern while digging through data from the World Value Survey. The international research project has collected survey data on cultural and social values for the past four decades.
When Vazquez-Olivieri realized that zero-sum beliefs appeared to decrease as people aged, she turned to experimentation.
The team ran four experiments surveying nearly 2,500 participants split between 18- to 30-year-olds and 65- to 80-year-olds. Each rated their agreement with general statements, such as: “If somebody gets rich, someone has to get poor.”
Results showed that older people tend to see the world as less zero-sum.
The team also tested perceptions of specific situations. For example, they designed a fictional company with poor work-life balance. The fake company offered bonuses and incentives for employees who were rated highly. Employees who rated low received no bonuses.
According to Vazquez-Olivieri, this is not a zero-sum situation. People are not ranked against each other. Technically, everyone at the company could receive a high rating. When researchers asked participants whether they saw this scenario as zero-sum, Vazquez-Olivieri noticed a similar trend.
“What we find overall is that younger people are more likely to say yes, this is an instance of zero-sum,” she says.
One reason younger people see the world as zero-sum, researchers say, is that they perceive resources as more scarce—a worldview potentially shaped by competitive college admissions, job, and housing markets.
Older people, by comparison, are more positive thinkers and have a more abundant mindset. They also have more life experience.
“What happens to us over time is that we sometimes only understand the benefits from a situation later in time,” says study coauthor Kricheli-Katz.
But does this trend apply only to millennials and Gen-Z?
To answer this question, Kricheli-Katz returned to the World Value Survey. Since it has collected data for decades, the survey allows researchers to see trends from previous generations all over the world. When she methodically compared the different waves of data, Kricheli-Katz found that the trend still held true. People became less zero-sum as they aged.
However, the survey data also showed that young people today have become even more zero-sum thinkers.
“We don’t really have an explanation for this. It could be that, for some reason, people perceive resources as more and more scarce, even though, actually, there’s a lot more to be shared now than years ago,” Keysar says.
Exposing this bias is important, the research team says, because it’s key to accurately understanding the world. We also might be missing out on the potential for a win-win.
For example, when Keysar and Vazquez-Olivieri taught “The Psychology of Negotiation,” a course where students simulated real negotiations, they noticed students came in with a strong bias, thinking every negotiation was zero-sum. But things soon changed.
“By the end of the quarter, we see a lot more cooperation based on the realization that almost every situation lends itself to expanding everybody’s benefits,” Keysar says. “They do a lot better by the end.”
If you’re worried about your own zero-sum thinking, there’s hope. Time is on your side.
“Even if you’re zero-sum now, given the data, you should become less zero-sum,” Vazquez-Olivieri says. “If anything, it might be a reason to call your grandparent, call an older person in your life. Get advice from them, because they might offer a different perspective.”
The research appears in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Source: University of Chicago
