The Psychology of the Sour Grape Effect

The minute hand on Chris’s watch nudges round to stand proudly at 12. It’s 4 pm on the button, and he’s sure that Tracy, his partner, will now be out of the job interview she had been so anxious about. Picking up his mobile phone, he calls her. After a few rings, she answers...

Chris: “How did the interview go??”

Tracy: “I didn’t get it.”

Chris: “Aw, T. I’m really sorry to hear that.”

Tracy: “It’s OK. Truth be told, I didn’t really want the job anyway.”

Now, Tracy might well be sincere in what she’s saying, but there’s also a chance she might be experiencing "sour grapes." Outcomes come in different flavours—victory is sweet, injustices are bitter, and losses leave a sour taste. I am sure you can relate to the annoyance and frustration that show up when you have fallen tantalising short of success, but you might be wondering how exactly sour grapes got offered up as a potential consolation prize.

When did the story of the sour grapes first emerge?

The sour grapes metaphor dates to Aesop, the Greek philosopher who lived between 620 to 564 BCE. His fable of the Fox and The Grapes tells the story of a fox who, on failing to jump high enough to reach a bunch of juicy grapes hanging on a vine, dismisses them as sour as he skulks off. The oft-quoted moral of the fable is: Many pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach. The sour grape effect has become synonymous with being dismissive and disparaging about goals we’ve failed to achieve.

Grapes hanging alluringly on the vine

Source: Pixabay / Pexels

Research relating to the sour grape effect

The impact that experiences of failure can have on how we appraise goals has been of interest to researchers working in psychology and behavioural economics. In 2020, a research team led by the Norwegian psychologist Hallgeir Sjåstad investigated not just whether people experience the sour grape effect, but also (and this is the bit the fox never got to discover!) whether those ‘grapes’ really do taste sour if we eventually get to taste them. Their research built on previous work conducted in the 1980s by the Norwegian philosopher Jon Elster (1983). He coined the term adaptive preferences to capture how our desires change according to our experiences—in essence, we come to want what we think we can achieve.

Across six complementary studies conducted in Norway and the USA, Sjåstad et al. (2020) invited participants to complete tasks and randomly assigned them to two groups to either receive good or poor feedback on their performance. The findings were strikingly consistent. Participants who were told they had performed poorly on a task, predicted that doing well in that same task in the future would increase their happiness to a lesser extent than did participants who were informed that they had performed well in the task. But, when the task was indeed repeated, and both groups were told by the researchers that they had performed well, the levels of happiness experienced by both groups were the same. Grapes that were thought to be sour, can taste sweet after all.

Importantly, the researchers found that not all participants were equally inclined to experience the sour grape effect. Those who were highly oriented towards achievement in life were less likely to devalue a task they were told they had performed poorly on. So, depending on how achievement-focused we are, we might not feel the need to disparage goals we don’t achieve. Go-getter foxes bear grapes less grudges.

What function might the sour grape effect serve?

The sour grape effect may serve important psychological purposes. Assuming that unachieved goals weren’t worth the effort provides a face-saving way to move on with our lives; minimising the risk that we waste time on—pun intended—fruitless endeavours. In the write-up of their study, Sjåstad et al. (2020) pointed out that dismissing the significance of unachieved goals helps us maintain a positive attitude towards ourselves and our abilities, so we can be emboldened in our efforts to tackle the next goal.

One note of caution when considering the moral of Aesop’s fable of The Fox and The Grapes—sometimes we can be premature in assuming that goals are beyond our reach. Let’s not underestimate the role that hard work, ingenuity, and, in particular, support from others can play in helping us to achieve our goals. If only there had been a boy, a horse, or even a mole available to help Aesop’s fox—as is the case in Charlie Mackesy’s (2019) excellent story)—it might well have reached those grapes!