Study: Sports fans feel smarter, more attractive when their team wins

Studies show that a person’s overall energy can change during the game whether or not their team is winning.

News 12 Staff

Feb 1, 2019, 11:21 PM

Updated 1,910 days ago

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Study: Sports fans feel smarter, more attractive when their team wins
Super Bowl LIII will take place this weekend and sports fans across the country are getting ready for the big day.
But studies show that a person’s overall energy can change during the game whether or not their team is winning. According to science, food tastes better and the sports fan feels smarter and more attractive when their team is winning.
“This is biological. Things are improving,” says Rutgers University associate professor Peter Economou.
Economou says that this is caused by serotonin and oxytocin, or what he called “the happy hormone.”
“Those hormones allow us to actually feel like we can conquer the world. It really improves one’s self-esteem,” he says.
Economou says that there is also the idea of “we.”
“The more that people can feel a part of something, the better they're going to feel,” he says.
Researchers have also found that the success and failure of national teams can sometimes have a short-term effect on the economy because happy people tend to spend more money.


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