THE SCIENCE OF A LOSS:
Why it’s not really a bad thing team is trailing
Here’s a reason to cheer up after dropping Game 1: Fans get maximum enjoyment from winning a series if their team comes close to losing along the way.
The despair of nearly losing turns into a flood of relief if the team wins later, which is more fun than watching it dominate all the way, says a group of U.S. researchers.
“Obviously, winning helps people enjoy a game. But we’re finding that it doesn’t help to have a game where you have positive feelings the whole game. Negative feelings are an important part of enjoying a game,” wrote Prabu David, of Washington State University, in the study’s summary.
Researchers studied fans from Michigan State and Ohio State universities — longtime rivals in college football. Researchers followed the rise and fall of fans’ emotions when these teams met in a game that looked like an Ohio State blowout in the first half until MSU roared back late.
In the end, Ohio State hung on to win by a field goal. But the team had a bad second-half scare first.
The Ohio State fans were ecstatic.
“You need the negative emotions of thinking your team might lose to get you in an excited, nervous state,” said Silvia Knobloch Westerwick, a co-author from Ohio State. “If your team wins, all that negative tension is suddenly converted to positive energy, which will put you in a euphoric state.”
The work was published five years ago in Journal of Communication, dressed up in some fancy language. (For instance, rooting for a team is called “affective disposition.”)
The point of doing the study was to examine strong emotions in a realworld setting, not the lab, David explained. “Sports creates emotions that are very powerful, and which matter to people.”
And if our Sens do lose the series? Knobloch-Westerwick has a positive take on that, too, based on a different study of people who watch tear-jerker movies.
She writes that “tragedies actually make people happier in the short-term” because “watching a tragedy movie caused people to think about their own close relationships, which in turn boosted their life happiness.” But that won’t happen, will it?