From: Pacific Standard
Hope, the Quintessential Sports Fan Emotion
Pacific Standard:
With the National Football League’s first game of the season now behind us and the usual slew of games coming Sunday, psychologists have a helpful reminder for all the fans out there: Your team probably won’t be as good as you think. That’s because, as a new study reports, football fans collectively believe their favorite teams will win more than 300 games—something that’s arithmetically impossible.
Important an observation as that is, psychologists Bradley Love, Łukasz Kopeć, and Olivia Guest weren’t primarily interested in football. Instead, they were interested in optimism bias, the tendency most of us have toward overly rosy expectations regarding workplace hazards, social mobility, and even cancer.
Read the whole story: Pacific Standard
More of our Members in the Media >
APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines.
Please login with your APS account to comment.