Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from

Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today,

Captain's Keith Colburn and Sig Hansen from the award-winning documentary series Deadliest Catch will share some surprising science

lessons from the fishing world. But first you'll learn about the psychology behind sour grapes.

Let's satisfy some curiosity. You've heard the term sour grapes. Would satisfy some curiosity. You've heard the term sour grapes, right?

It basically means that when people can't get something they want, they tend to decide it's not

worth wanting at all.

The term originally came from Aesop's fables and thousands of years later

researchers looked into the idea. They found that it's a tendency we still have today,

a tendency they call the sour grape effect.

The fable was about a fox who tried to eat grapes from a vine but couldn't reach them.

Rather than admit he just couldn't jump high enough, the fox just said he didn't want the grapes anyway since they were unripe and

sour. That's where we get the phrase sour grapes. Aesop's fables taught

human morals so it makes sense that the people in this recent study

basically did the same thing. Across six experiments, scientists gave people either

good or bad feedback on a test. The researchers found that people who were randomly

selected to get bad feedback predicted they'd feel less happy about a good

test result in the future. Relatable, right? I mean, who hasn't failed at something and tried to hide their shock and disappointment?

Scientists think we do this as a self-protective strategy. We don't want our bad results to say something about who we are or who will become in the future.

So we pretend to have never wanted it at all.

We don't need those sour grapes.

But when scientists told the participants that they'd gotten top scores on a subsequent test that participants were all equally happy.

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