Playing With Fire: The Impact of Football Game Chanting on Level of Aggression1

Studies report higher levels of spectator aggression at the end rather than the beginning of sports games. None of these studies have examined the effect of chanting in this context. Based on contagion theory, we hypothesized that at the end of a football (soccer) game, spectators who had taken part in collective chanting would report higher levels of aggression than would spectators who had not chanted. Male football fans (N = 80) participated in the study: Half completed the Buss–Durkee Hostility Inventory before the game, and half completed it after the game. Findings show that chanting spectators reported a heightened level of aggression in comparison with non‐chanting spectators. Theoretical explanations for these findings are discussed. Practical recommendations are suggested.     

Causal effects of violent sports video games on aggression: Is it competitiveness or violent content?

Three experiments examined the impact of excessive violence in sport video games on aggression-related variables. Participants played either a nonviolent simulation-based sports video game (baseball or football) or a matched excessively violent sports video game. Participants then completed measures assessing aggressive cognitions (Experiment 1), aggressive affect and attitudes towards violence in sports (Experiment 2), or aggressive behavior (Experiment 3). Playing an excessively violent sports video game increased aggressive affect, aggressive cognition, aggressive behavior, and attitudes towards violence in sports. Because all games were competitive, these findings indicate that violent content uniquely leads to increases in several aggression-related variables, as predicted by the General Aggression Model and related social-cognitive models.     

Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting: Analysis of Criminal Behavior During the SEC Football Season

Evidence suggests that live sporting events may lead fans to engage in criminal behaviors. The current study examined the relationship between criminal behavior and college football game days. Archival data of criminal offenses were collected from Southeastern Conference member institution police departments to analyze reported criminal offenses during the regular season. Multilevel linear models revealed an increase in criminal behavior. A factorial ANOVA indicated an interaction of team rankings and game outcome was related to specific types of criminal behavior in the host city (F (1, 9142) = 20.07, p < .001). Results provide insight to more effectively allocate resources.     

Biased evaluations of in-group and out-group spectator behavior at sporting events: the importance of team identification and threats to social identity

Previous researchers have demonstrated that sport fans often exhibit in-group bias by reporting more positive evaluations of fellow in-group fans than of rival out-group fans. The authors designed the present investigation to extend previous research by replicating past efforts in a field setting and to advance our understanding of the impact of social identity threat. The present authors hypothesized that, in addition to the base-level in-group bias effect, the bias effect would be most pronounced in situations involving a threat to one's social identity. The authors believed that fans of a losing team and fans of a home team would experience threats to their identity and, consequently, exhibit particularly high levels of in-group favoritism. Further, because past researchers had shown that one's level of group identification plays a vital role in social perception, the present authors predicted an interaction in which the greatest amount of bias would be exhibited by highly identified fans rooting for a home team that had lost. Data gathered from spectators (N = 148) at 2 North American college basketball games confirmed the authors' expectations, with the exception that the supporters of the winning team reported higher levels of bias. The authors discussed the factors underlying the unexpected game outcome effect and the use of in-group bias as a coping strategy.     

The illusion of knowledge: When more information reduces accuracy and increases confidence

Intuition suggests that having more information can increase prediction accuracy of uncertain outcomes. In four experiments, we show that more knowledge can decrease accuracy and simultaneously increase prediction confidence. Participants were asked to predict basketball games sampled from a National Basketball Association season. All participants were provided with statistics (win record, halftime score), while half were additionally given the team names. Knowledge of names increased the confidence of basketball fans consistent with their belief that this knowledge improved their predictions. Contrary to this belief, it decreased the participants’ accuracy by reducing their reliance on statistical cues. One of the factors contributing to this underweighting of statistical cues was a bias to bet on more familiar teams against the statistical odds. Finally, in a real betting experiment, fans earned less money if they knew the team names while persisting in their belief that this knowledge improved their predictions.     

The effect of COVID-19 on home advantage in high- and low-stake situations: Evidence from the European national football competitions

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly altered the way sporting events are observed. With the absence or limited presence of spectators in stadiums, the traditional advantage enjoyed by home teams has diminished considerably. This underscores the notion that the support of home fans can often be considered a key factor of the home advantage (HA) phenomenon, wherein teams perform better in front of their own supporters. However, the impact of reduced attendance on games with higher stakes, as opposed to low-stakes friendly matches, remains uncertain. In this study, we investigate the recently concluded European football championship (EURO 20), wherein several teams had the advantage of playing at home in high-stakes games with only one-third of the stadium capacity filled. Firstly, we demonstrate that the Covid-19 restrictions, leading to reduced fan attendance, resulted in a nearly 50% decrease in HA compared to the HA exhibited by the same teams during the qualification stage preceding EURO 20, even after accounting for team strength. Secondly, we show that while low-stakes friendly matches generally exhibit a smaller overall HA compared to high-stakes games, the absence of fans led to a similar reduction in HA during the low-stakes matches. Utilizing the recently developed Home Advantage Mediated (HAM) model (Bilalić, Gula, & Vaci, 2021, Scientific Reports, 21558), we were able to attribute the reduction in both high- and low-stakes games to poorer team performance, with no significant contribution from referee bias.     

Evaluating behavioral skills training to teach safe tackling skills to youth football players

With concussion rates on the rise for football players, there is a need for further research to increase skills and decrease injuries. Behavioral skills training is effective in teaching a wide variety of skills but has yet to be studied in the sports setting. We evaluated behavioral skills training to teach safer tackling techniques to six participants from a Pop Warner football team. Safer tackling techniques increased during practice and generalized to games for the two participants who had opportunities to tackle in games.     

Terror management and the vicissitudes of sports fan affiliation: the effects of mortality salience on optimism and fan identification

The present research examined the hypothesis derived from terror management theory that identifications with sports teams shield against the potential consequences of awareness of death. Experiment 1 demonstrated that Dutch participants who were reminded of their death expressed greater optimism about the results of the national soccer team compared to a control condition. Experiment 2 conceptually replicated this finding with American participants and college sports teams. In addition, Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that success of a team is a prerequisite for sports fan affiliation to function as a buffer against death concerns. Before the college football season began, participants who were reminded about death expressed greater relative preference for a more salient, but less successful college football team over a national college champion basketball team compared to control participants. However, after the football team lost its first game of the season, participants who were reminded about death indicated greater relative preference for the successful basketball team. Results are discussed with regard to the psychological function of social identifications. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“My natural environment has provided me with about fifty different ways of expressing frustration”: Mining the visceral angst of Australian Rules football followers

Modern spectator sports provoke intense bodily passions in fans as well as athletes yet the embodied emotions of sports fans are understudied. This paper explores the frustrations of Australian Rules football supporters. Drawing on psychoanalysis and religious studies it traces the expressions and possible causes of their frustration by mining material from a set of interviews with fans along with the comments of Australian Rules football followers in books, articles and internet forums. An underlying question is how the frustrations of these football supporters might reveal something of the intersections of emotion, bodies and sport that spectator sports provoke.     

Effects of event valence on long-term memory for two baseball championship games

We investigated how event valence affected accuracy and vividness of long-term memory for two comparable public events. In 2008, 1,563 fans answered questions about objective details concerning two decisive baseball championship games between the Yankees (2003 winners) and the Red Sox (2004 winners). Both between- and within-groups analyses indicated that fans remembered the game their team won significantly more accurately than the game their team lost. Fans also reported more vividness and more rehearsal for the game their team won. We conclude that individuals rehearse positive events more than comparable negative events, and that this additional rehearsal increases both vividness and accuracy of memories about positive events. Our results differ from those of prior studies involving memories for negative events that may have been unavoidably rehearsed; such rehearsal may have kept those memories from fading. Long-term memory for an event is determined not only by the valence of the event, but also by experiences after the event.     

Risky decision making and cognitive flexibility among online sports bettors in Nigeria

Online sports betting is a popular recreational activity in Nigeria. Like other forms of gambling, risk of pathological progression exists for gamblers who continue betting despite severe financial and psychosocial consequences. In the present study, we examined whether this population of gamblers shows deficits in decision making and cognitive flexibility that have been documented in Western gambling populations. Thirty-six online sports bettors and 42 non-gambling participants completed a version of the Iowa gambling task (IGT) and an established set-shifting task for the assessment of cognitive flexibility. The two groups did not differ significantly in the selection of disadvantageous decks on the IGT. In contrast, sports bettors committed significantly more errors on the set-shifting task than non-gambling control participants. As this performance deficit was not specific to trials requiring a set shift, it most likely resulted from gambling-related changes in general cognitive or motivational abilities that are required to successfully complete challenging mental tasks. While our results illustrate that findings from Western populations cannot automatically be generalised to other contexts, it should be noted that we focused on only one particular type of gambling and included mostly participants with mild gambling-related problems.     

managing the action: sports bookmakers as entrepreneurs

More and more states have moved to legalize various forms of gambling as a viable way to raise substantial revenues. And while some have considered adding sports betting to their menu of games, Nevada continues to be the only state where placing a bet on sports events is legal. This is both puzzling and ironic considering the popularity of gambling and the prominence of sports. Despite the lack of concrete knowledge about illegal sports betting, two justifications for keeping it illegal have dominated the public debate. The first has to do with whether legal sports betting could successfully compete with illegal operations were it to be legalized and the second has to do with a purported link between gambling on sports and organized crime. This paper focuses on the second line of argument and examines the social, organizational, and occupational features of bookmaking. If bookmakers are conduits for organized crime, as is claimed, there should be evidence of this in the day-to-day activities of bookmaking and in the career trajectories of bookmakers. The analysis is based upon interviews with 47 sports bookmakers working in the Rust Belt region. Drawing upon what sports bookies themselves have to say about their experiences in the business and their career trajectories, there appears to be little merit to the organized crime link argument. The analysis suggests that unlike other types of deviance, the social organization of bookmaking insulates bookies from the more typical consequences associated with frequent and prolonged deviant activity, for example, getting arrested, being prosecuted, serving time in prison, and forced association with other criminals. In fact, the findings suggest that bookies are more like entrepreneurs than criminals. While a single study cannot resolve the normative question about whether sports bookmaking should be criminalized, the findings do show that the social construction of bookmaking and bookmakers found in the public debate and popular culture does not reflect the reality of sports bookmaking.     

Focalism: a source of durability bias in affective forecasting

The durability bias, the tendency to overpredict the duration of affective reactions to future events, may be due in part to focalism, whereby people focus too much on the event in question and not enough on the consequences of other future events. If so, asking people to think about other future activities should reduce the durability bias. In Studies 1-3, college football fans were less likely to overpredict how long the outcome of a football game would influence their happiness if they first thought about how much time they would spend on other future activities. Studies 4 and 5 ruled out alternative explanations and found evidence for a distraction interpretation, that people who think about future events moderate their forecasts because they believe that these events will reduce thinking about the focal event. The authors discuss the implications of focalism for other literatures, such as the planning fallacy.     

Engaging in distancing tactics among sport fans: effects on self-esteem and emotional responses

The authors examined the effects of distancing tactics on self-esteem and emotions, following a win or loss of one's favorite team. They measured state self-esteem and emotional responses of basketball fans as they exited the sport arena after their team had won or lost an official game. Half of the fans were given the opportunity to increase or decrease their association with the team before the measures of self-esteem and emotions; the remaining fans were given the opportunity after the measures. The fans tended to associate more with the team after team success than after team failure. In addition, self-esteem and positive emotions were higher, and negative emotions lower, when measured after, rather than before, the opportunity to increase or decrease association with the team. Those effects were more pronounced among high-team-identification fans than among low-team-identification fans. The results suggest a distinction between the short- and long-term effects of game outcome on the willingness to associate with one's team. In the short term, willingness to associate with the team may oscillate in accordance with team performance, even among high-team-identification fans; in the long term, only high-team-identification fans may maintain their allegiance to the team.     

Match Madness: Probability Matching in Prediction of the NCAA Basketball Tournament1

Every year, billions of dollars are spent gambling on the outcomes of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. This study examines how individuals make predictions for tournament pools, one of the most popular forms of betting, in which individuals must correctly predict as many games in the tournament as possible. We demonstrate that individuals predict more upsets (i.e., wins by a higher seeded team) than would be considered rational by a normative choice model, and that individuals are no better than chance at doing so. These predictions fit a pattern of probability matching, in which individuals predict upsets at a rate equal to past frequency. This pattern emerges because individuals believe the outcomes of the games are nonrandom and, therefore, predictable.     

Engaging in Distancing Tactics Among Sport Fans: Effects on Self-Esteem and Emotional Responses

Abstract

The authors examined the effects of distancing tactics on self-esteem and emotions, following a win or loss of one's favorite team. They measured state self-esteem and emotional responses of basketball fans as they exited the sport arena after their team had won or lost an official game. Half of the fans were given the opportunity to increase or decrease their association with the team before the measures of self-esteem and emotions; the remaining fans were given the opportunity after the measures. The fans tended to associate more with the team after team success than after team failure. In addition, self-esteem and positive emotions were higher, and negative emotions lower, when measured after, rather than before, the opportunity to increase or decrease association with the team. Those effects were more pronounced among high-team-identification fans than among low-team-identification fans. The results suggest a distinction between the short- and long-term effects of game outcome on the willingness to associate with one's team. In the short term, willingness to associate with the team may oscillate in accordance with team performance, even among high-team-identification fans; in the long term, only high-team-identification fans may maintain their allegiance to the team.     

Adolescent–parent attachment characteristics and quality of youth sport friendship

ObjectivesTo examine the link between security of adolescent–parent attachment relationships and experiences of friendship quality in male team sport participants.Design and methodNinety six male adolescents involved in team sports completed self-report assessments of relationship security with a key parental attachment figure and of the nature of their friendship with a nominated sporting best friend. Teammates and coaches also provided ratings related to how easy they found it to get along with participants.ResultsResults provided evidence that the nature of the adolescent–parent attachment relationship was significantly related to sporting friendship experiences. More secure adolescent–parent attachment characteristics corresponded to more positive sporting friendships. Furthermore, sporting friendship dyads where both friends reported more secure attachment relations with parents were experienced more positively than dyads where both friends were less securely attached to parents or even where one friend was less securely attached.ConclusionThere is a suggestion that adolescent attachment relations with parents are indicative of underpinning working models of attachment that may subsequently influence the manner in which youngsters negotiate friendships in sporting contexts.     

Individual differences in attentional capability are linked to creative decision making

There is a link between visual attention and creativity concerning the generation of rare and flexible decisions/solutions. However, the relationship between individual differences in attentional capability and creative decision making has not yet been investigated in detail. The current study scrutinized this link in a sport‐specific divergent thinking task including videos of real game situations and compared performances between football players being divided into two different expertise levels (expert and amateur football players). We conducted a multiple linear regression analysis to assess whether attentional capability along the attentional focus’ meridians (horizontal, vertical, diagonal) and participants’ expertise level predict creative decision making. The attentional capability along the horizontal meridian of participants’ attentional focus and participants’ expertise level emerged as positive predictors. The findings provide evidence of a relationship between football players’ spatial distribution of attention that match the demands of their sport and an expertise advantage in sport‐specific creative decision making. Implications are not only important for sports, but also for all areas in which spatial attention is required in order to generate unusual solutions.     

Promoting fan engagement: An exploration of the fundamental motives for sport consumption amongst premier league football spectators

The aim of this study was to examine whether fan engagement could be predicted by the motivational dimensions of sport consumption. A sample of 806 football sport fans (African = 85%, male = 67.4%, part of an organised supporters club = 57.6%) were participants. They completed the Fan Engagement Scale (FES), the Motivation Scale for Sport Consumption (MSSC) and a biographical questionnaire. Structural equation modelling was applied to evaluate the postulated regressive paths between the motivational dimensions for sports consumption and fan engagement. The motivational dimensions for sport consumption were clustered into personal and game-related factors. Both these clusters of factors were predictive of fan engagement. Customer engagement (CE) theory appears to explain the findings.