It’s hard to define the sore-loser mentality clearly.
Or even the over-the-top winner mentality.
But it is the reaction to a loss, particularly in professional sports, that can create an unflattering trend.
Brent Walker, past-president of the Association for Applied Sports Psychology and associate athletic director for championship performance at Columbia University, said that although the reactions are fundamentally different across the sports landscape, the reality is that dealing with losing is about how somebody’s identity is impacted.
“There’s plenty of interesting research out there that gives you an idea of what’s going on in someone’s mind after a loss,” Walker said.