VANCOUVER  He sulked. He criticized. He was brashly dismissive of the skating silver medal that was draped around his neck last week. Yes, Russia's Evgeni Plushenko would have been far happier with gold.

And perhaps with bronze?

Research by three U.S. academics, who analyzed heat-of-the-moment reactions, medal-stand temperament and interviews of Olympians, shows that bronze-medal winners, on average, are happier with their finishes than silver medalists. Take silver, and you tend to fixate on the near miss. Score bronze, and you are thankful you were not shut out altogether.

"When you come in second," said Thomas Gilovich, chairman of Cornell's psychology department and one of the study's co-authors, "it's the most natural thing in the world to look upward. 'I got the silver and that's what it is, but what is it not? It's not the gold.'

"With the bronze, the natural place to look is downward. 'I got the bronze. That's what it is, but what it isn't is off the medal stand.' "

Psychologists described it as counterfactual thinking.

Plushenko maintained he should have won the gold that went to Evan Lysacek, suggesting the American was not a "true champion" because he hadn't executed a quad (four-rotation) jump. Plushenko was trying to become the first men's figure skater to repeat as gold medalist in more than half a century. He'd won in Torino in 2006. Lysacek beat him by 1.31 points in Vancouver.

Bronze medalist Daisuke Takahashi, meanwhile, was elated — "so emotional I was in tears," he said.

The women's freestyle skiing moguls drew similarly incongruous reactions. Jennifer Heil hoped to claim Canada's first gold, but she was nosed out at the end by the USA's Hannah Kearney and could not conceal her disappointment. Behind her, third-place Shannon Bahrke of the USA was all smiles and hugs.

There are exceptions, of course. Skier Julia Mancuso celebrated silvers in the women's downhill and super combined. Johnny Spillane likewise was nipped at the end but couldn't have been happier with the first U.S. Olympic medal in Nordic combined.

"When we documented the trend, there were some silver medalists who were delighted and some bronze medalists who were crushed," Gilovich said. "But on average, the weight of the data showed there was this significant tendency for bronze medalists to be happier."

The study was based on athletes' emotional responses during the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. The findings were released in 1995, though they continue to draw attention and, the authors said, remain applicable today.

Expectations going into events — who was favored to win gold or other medals, who wasn't — were taken into account.

"It's like a student who gets a B, missing an A by one point. The B's no longer that good," said study co-author Scott Madey, who teaches health psychology and graduate-level history at Pennsylvania's Shippensburg University. "Same way when you miss your flight by five minutes. You say, 'Well, I could have made up five minutes somehow.' If you get close to it, you think, 'There are things I could have done.'

"I don't know whether we learn that type of thinking about what we could have done or if it's something that's wired into us."

Mark Grimmette said he can buy the less-is-more theory.

The 39-year-old luger recalled the excitement of a bronze-medal performance with Brian Martin in two-man in Nagano in 1998 — the USA's first-ever medal in the sport — and more mixed feelings over a silver-medal finish in Salt Lake City in '02. He and Martin missed gold there by 0.134 of a second.

"It was a home Games and … we had maybe a better plan going in," said Grimmette, the U.S. flag bearer during the opening ceremony in Vancouver and later a 13th-place finisher with Martin in the two-man event. "Yeah, I think it was pretty disappointing we didn't come away with the gold."