It seemed like the entire country (save for a few Blue Devil alums) cheered for Butler, the long-shot basketball team from Indiana, in this year’s NCAA Final Four tournament. Researchers have established that cheering for a losing team can negatively affect happiness and self-esteem, so why do people persist in loving the underdog? Daniel Engber, exploring this puzzling propensity at Slate, suggests that everything from a simple cost-benefit decision to humans’ preference for fairness may explain it. Our preference for the underdog is global, but also fickle: “At an unconscious level, we know we don’t take underdogs all that seriously,” says Scott Allison, a professor of psychology at the University of Richmond. “We love them, but it’s a weak effect.”[%comments]
Why Do We Love the Underdog?
TAGS: psychology, Sports
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Scott must mean subconscious. Its difficult to take anything seriously when one’s at an unconscious level.
If you are choosing an underdog purely for that fact, and not because it is a team you have other emotional ties to, I’d say the negative effect of losing is small, but the potential benefit from the feel good story is large. If this assumption is true, from a risk perspective, I think you gain from siding with the underdog.
It may be a case of selective recall. IF you root for the perennial favorite Yankees for the entire Naughts Decade, would you even remember year to year?
If you choose to root for a novel team like Butler University–honestly who has heard of Butler– you would remember it because it is so distinct. And if they hit Payola, you are Nostradamus. IF they fail, drink enough beer, and you can erase it.
I’ve noticed people tend to root for underdogs in team sports, but the top dog in individual sports. Any reason for that?
We sometimes root for the underdog because an upset will cause more thrill than if a team that has a perfect record wins it all. Usually the people who are fake fans of the underdog that don’t even watch the sport, root for the underdog just to piss off there friends that are fans of the teams that they are facing.
I think it’s pretty obvious why we all want to root for the under dog. Sympathy. As humans a natural feeling that comes when we see a loosing team is symapthy and inklings of hope that maybe this time they’ll make it all the way. So naturally we root for them, hoping to be exstatic at the result of our choice rather then dissapointed.
We are often cheering against the overdog.
I think that the average fan doesn’t usually pick the underdog out of sympathy, but rather out of spite. Yes, Butler was the lovable “small town” group, but more people rooted for them because they just plain hate Duke(As do I). For every power program or team in American sports there is an army of haters that follows them. It would be nice to think that we rooting for fairness or out of sympathy, but the fans realistically aren’t that compassionate.