Brain scans reveal why sports fans lose control after big defeats. Photo / 123rf
Brain scans reveal why sports fans lose control after big defeats. Photo / 123rf
From handcuffing themselves to goalposts to punching police horses, British football fans are notorious for over-reacting to a defeat by a hated rival.
Now scientists have watched the effect on the brain in real time, and it shows just why sports supporters struggle to contain their emotions after a humiliatingloss.
Chilean researchers scanned the brains of 60 male football fans while they watched dozens of goals involving either their favourite team, a rival squad or a neutral side.
They found that a significant defeat deactivated a part of the brain called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex – part of the “salience network” which governs self-awareness and self-control.
The sudden failure of this control region is why otherwise rational individuals can “suddenly flip” at matches, researchers concluded.
Francisco Zamorano of the University of San Sebastian in Santiago, said: “While social affiliation has been widely studied, the neurobiological mechanisms of social identity in competitive settings are unclear, so we set out to investigate the brain mechanisms associated with emotional responses in soccer fans to their teams’ victories and losses.
“Rivalry rapidly reconfigures the brain’s control balance within seconds.
“With significant victory, the reward circuitry in the brain is amplified, whereas in significant defeat the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which plays an important role in cognitive control, shows suppression of control signals.”
English football is rife with tribal fan behaviour which, while largely good-natured, has been known to tip into violence or sometimes farce.
When Scotland beat England 2-1 at Wembley in 1977 the Tartan Army staged a pitch invasion with many digging up slices of the turf as a souvenir.
In one of the most iconic football images of the 1970s, fans were photographed clambering on the goalpost which finally gave way, splitting in two.
Throughout the 1980s, Chelsea fans would regularly throw celery at rival players, a practice finally banned in 2007 when Cesc Fabregas was hit by the vegetable.
Chelsea fans were notorious for throwing celery at rival teams. Photo / Getty Images
Five Chelsea fans were bound over to keep the peace following a similar incident at Villa Park in 2002.
In 2003, Newcastle United fan Barry Rogerson was jailed for a year after punching Bud, from West Yorkshire’s mounted section when his team lost to bitter rivals Sunderland.
And Portsmouth fan Derek Jennings was similarly jailed for 20 months for punching a police horse during a Carabao Cup match against longstanding rival Southampton in 2020.
‘Studying fanaticism matters’
The researchers believe the same patterns could apply to other types of fanaticism as well.
Zamorano added: “Studying fanaticism matters because it reveals generalisable neural mechanisms that can scale from stadium passion to polarisation, violence and population-level public-health harm,” he said.
“Most importantly, these very circuits are forged in early life: caregiving quality, stress exposure, and social learning sculpt the valuation–control balance that later makes individuals vulnerable to fanatic appeals.
“Therefore, protecting childhood is the most powerful prevention strategy. Societies that neglect early development do not avoid fanaticism; they inherit its harms.”
The study was published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America.
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