Is it okay not to use 'than,' when I want to say 'comparison?'
"A Princeton University study found that people who worked in a clean workspace out-performed those who worked in a cluttered one because clutter pulls your attention away from your work."

This is the sentence.
I think the sentence should be "people who worked in a clean workspace out-performed THAN those who~"
Why isn't 'than' used in the sentence even though the meaning implies comparison between different people?

Thank you very much!

Question

Is it okay not to use 'than,' when I want to say 'comparison?'
"A Princeton University study found that people who worked in a clean workspace out-performed those who worked in a cluttered one because clutter pulls your attention away from your work."

This is the sentence.
I think the sentence should be "people who worked in a clean workspace out-performed THAN those who~"
Why isn't 'than' used in the sentence even though the meaning implies comparison between different people?

Thank you very much!

Answer

"Than" is used when comparing two objects.  The basic forms are "more X than Y" and "less X than Y."

Susan is more helpful than Anna.

Some verbs inherently make a comparison and the words "more ... than"  and "less ... than" aren't used.

Joe outperforms Sam.
Sam underperforms Joe.

The Oxford Learner's Dictionaries website is an excellent resource for learners.

outperform verb
 https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/outperform?q=outperform

​outperform somebody/something to achieve better results than somebody/something
The company has consistently outperformed its larger rivals.

Answer

Chris is more helpful than I am.
Chris outperforms me :(

Answer

Thank you both of you!! I totally get it now. :D

Answer

“than” can only be used with adjectives or adverbs while “outperform” is a verb. You might want to check out the word’s definition here so that you can see it was used correctly in the first sentence: https://www.google.com.vn/amp/s/dictionary.cambridge.org/amp/english/outperform

Answer

The use of the prefix "out-" acts as the comparative in place of "than" in this example. If the prefix were not there, it would be written as "performed better than those who..".

You can add the prefix "out-" to most verbs to imply that the formerly mentioned group/person is better than the latter.