The passion for football is a form of tribal love evidenced by a brain imaging study carried out at the University of Coimbra.
It is well known that the passion for football arouses emotions, sometimes irrational, that cross the border between tribal love and fanaticism.
This tension between love and fanaticism, which simultaneously implies the feeling of belonging to a group and rivalry with other groups, defines tribal love. A pioneering study, carried out at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS) of the University of Coimbra (UC), has now shed some light on this subject.
Over three years, researchers Catarina Duarte, Miguel Castelo-Branco (coordinator) and Ricardo Cayolla studied the brains of 56 fans, mostly from the official fans of Académica e Futebol Clube do Porto, whose level of passion was assessed through s psychological assessment.
Research participants, 54 men and two women, aged between 21 and 60, were exposed to emotionally intense videos, either positive (eg Kelvin's goal against Benfica in the case of FCP supporters) or negative or neutral.
In the study, already published in SCAN, one of the world's most prestigious emotion neuroscience magazines, “has been observed to activate reward brain circuits that are similar to those activated in the experience of romantic love. In particular, emotional memory circuits are recruited more by positive experiences than by negative ones», says Miguel Castelo-Branco.
This means, explains the study coordinator, “that passion tends to prevail over the most negative contents, such as, for example, defeat with a rival, which tend to be suppressed from emotional memory. The study therefore highlights the positive aspects of this form of tribal love, and that the brain has mechanisms to suppress negative content. For this reason, the brain seems to have mechanisms to protect against memories that could lead to tribal hatred».
« Interestingly, the bigger the score of club passion, psychologically measured, the greater the activity in certain regions of the brain associated with emotions and reward, some similar to those involved in romantic love», stresses the also professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra.
Author: Cristina Pinto (Press Office – University of Coimbra)
Science in the Regional Press – Ciência Viva
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