Losers bring extremely bad emotions, so why do people still bet?

Millions of French football fans have felt great when France won the 2018 World Cup. Meanwhile, billions of supporters for other teams are extremely miserable. The problem is, losers bring extremely bad emotional index, while winning only brings normal happiness feelings.

Most sports fans will tell you how much their supporters lose in pain. Just like with the first date, expectations are high and almost always dissipated. In most professional sports, only one team becomes the champion, so every season ends with the defeat for most teams.

"Loss of aversion", a key theory in behavioral economics, may partly explain why a sports fan reacts so strongly. First proposed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman psychologists, loss aversion is the idea of ​​negative experiences of losing something, it is worse than positive experiences. when they achieve something of similar or even greater value. For example, if you make a bet, the winner will receive 5 USD if a coin falls flat, but they will lose 4 USD if the coin landed in a ditch, they will usually not bet, although it will a good investment. They will not do it because they instinctively know the emotional pain of losing money is much greater than positive emotions when winning. This theory has proven very useful in marketing and incentive frameworks for employees.

Most sports fans will tell you how much their supporters lose in pain.

Data from a new study shows that loss aversion also describes the life of a sports fan. In this study, economists Peter Dolton and George MacKerron of the University of Sussex analyzed data from Project Mappiness, a survey where people were randomly contacted on the phone and asked to be happy. to what extent. Tens of thousands of people have registered to survey. In addition to estimating their happiness at a certain time, they also allow researchers to track their position by GPS and report what they are doing when they are contacted.

To test the impact of sports, the researchers looked at the happiness of football fans before and after the England and Scotland games from 2011 to 2013. They found that in the hours before the game Fighting, these fans are a little happier at those times. If their team wins, in the next hour their happiness score is 3-5 points higher than normal, on a scale of 0-100. A draw makes their happy feelings drop 2-4 points, and lose 6.5-10 points. (These are moderate effects, some people may be happier or sadier.)

According to loss aversion theory, loss always makes you feel worse than the positive emotions that victory brings. And so, the researchers found that winning does not bring about positive, happy emotions as expected, while losing brings worse emotions than expected.

If so, why do so many people still admire sports betting? Researchers don't really have the answer to this question. According to the subjective assessment of the author of the article on Quartz, it may not be about feeling happy. Instead, betting is to connect with others in a community and the inner sense of loyalty to something.