Football fans hardwired to be biased by ‘caveman’ instinct
FOOTBALL fans are instinctively biased towards their own team because of their “caveman” brains, psychologists from the University of York have found.
An experiment monitoring brains of Chelsea and Manchester United supporters found they were hard-wired to interpret incidents differently when their teams played each other.
What one group saw as a harsh refereeing decision the other thought it was the right one, and while one side may feel they were unlucky to concede a goal, the other thought it justified.
The parts of the brain that control sight and sound did not vary between the Blues and the Reds, suggesting they all saw and heard the same things.
But the parts of the brain controlling cognition, self-identity and higher functions reacted differently, demonstrating a link between awareness and bias, said researchers.
It is a part of the brain that has survived evolution from mankind’s early ancestors as it allowed them to form groups and favour others to build hierarchies and societies.
In the same way, fans of one team will agree with each other over the interpretation of what they see, while fans of the opposition will have an alternative view of the same incidents.
Brains cannot help being biased, said Professor Tim Andrews, a psychologist at the University of York who led the research published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.
His team fixed an MRI scanner to record activity in different regions of the brain as supporters watched a montage of clips from matches.
Volunteers who went to games, rather than those who were armchair viewers, were chosen to reflect the more passionate viewpoints.
Those who took part had been supporters for 15 years or more and seen a minimum of 25 matches in the flesh.
Prof Andrews said: “When we compared the brain activity of supporters of the same team and supporters of opposing teams, we found that activity in the sensory regions of the brain were aligned in all participants – or in other words, they all saw and heard the same game.
“But in the frontal and subcortical regions of the brain – including areas known to be active in reward, self-identity and control of movement – there was a correlation between supporters of the same team, but significant differences between the groups.
“This is what allows fans of rival teams to develop a different understanding of the same game.”
He added: “The regions of the brain that showed the biggest differences between the groups of supporters – the subcortical regions positioned in the middle of the brain – are believed to have been conserved during evolution.
“This supports the idea that group mentality may reflect one of the more primitive human instincts.”