By Felicity Duncan
Two British researchers have confirmed something I’ve long suspected: in the aggregate, sports make us less happy. Personally, I don’t watch any sports or support any teams. For years, I’ve been telling people it’s because I don’t want to put my happiness in the hands of the members of a football team.Â
Now, at last, researchers have devoted their efforts to proving that I am correct — according to a paper by Peter Dolton and George MacKerron, football makes people, on average, less happy. The decline in happiness that follows a loss by the team you support is more than twice as large as the improvement in happiness that follows a victory, and the sadness of a loss lingers significantly longer too.Â
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Overall, a loss robs sports fans of four times as much happiness as they would have gained from a win. That means that every football match results in more sadness than it does happiness (assuming equal numbers of fans on both sides). So why do people still watch sports? The researchers suspect that over-optimism plays a role — fans consistently expect their team to perform better than it does in reality.
My advice? If you must follow a sport, pick the best team each season and support it. That way, you’ll enjoy at least a small happiness boost.
In Premium today, you can learn why Alec Hogg would pick Vusi Pikoli to replace Shaun Abrahams at the NPA. You can get the latest news about Tesla, including its better-than-expected earnings and worse-than-expected net loss, and you can read about the unrest and anxiety in Zimbabwe. You can also enjoy the story of how Apple managed to be the first listed company to hit a $1 trillion market cap.Â
