As an avid sports fan, I’ve always marvelled at how often even the best teams let one loss bleed into the next game. I mean, how often does a team do extremely well, often winning several games in a row, before one shock loss sends them into a losing streak? Are we just hard-wired to hold onto failure, inevitably dragging the outcome out into the future?
It’s hard to talk about the mental impacts of losing without mentioning the mental impact of winning. Winning, in itself, is a good thing, and our brains treat it as such, with dopamine and other “feel good” hormones released. Athletes commonly describe this as a “winning high” as you feel on top of the world. Chances are, you’ve felt this too! Sometimes, however, winning too many games consecutively can also have negative impacts, fostering complacency and overconfidence, which worsens the impact of a shock loss, and subsequent losing streaks, even in the best teams.
losing streaks
Losing streaks can be even more detrimental to a team, but what’s behind it? After millions of years of evolution, how can we still not put a loss behind us? Well there’s more to it than you may think. Losing in general sparks countless negative emotions, and high-pressure losses only exacerbate feelings. Losses also create extra pressure from fans and management to succeed, intensifying the emotional load on the players. These emotions, especially in an athletic environment, are commonly dismissed and replaced with a rigid, systematic approach to solve any issues uncovered during the loss. This suppression can lead to players carrying those negative emotions into the future, impacting future games and performances. A team full of players still reeling from the last game results in lower concentration, limited energy, and overall lower effectiveness, translating into a much higher chance of losing, and as the losses pile up, so does the emotional strain and stress on the players. Even worse, this cycle of self-reinforcing emotional weight and performance pressure makes it even harder for players to reset before the next challenge.
Unsurprisingly, a 2025 NIH study confirmed that when a team was on a losing streak, they performed the worst at the subsequent training session and in the following match. What was surprising, however, was that the team on a winning streak weren’t the best performers at trainings and in subsequent matches, but instead the team which had a mix of wins and losses were the highest performers. The team with the mix of wins and losses had a higher level of urgency and concentration in each game as there was an added importance to each match, and the mix of wins and losses also worked to keep the team motivated with the knowledge that they could win, but also grounded with the knowledge that if they were complacent, they would lose.