This is your brain on football? ‘Extremes’ fans’ brains go through

By Stephen Beech

Football fans' brain activity goes to "extremes" while watching a match, reveals new research.

The findings may explain why otherwise rational people suddenly “flip” at matches, say scientists.

Researchers in Chile found that certain circuit regions of the brain were activated in fans while watching their team play, triggering extreme positive and negative emotions and behavior.

They say these patterns could apply to other types of fanaticism as well, and that the circuits are forged early in life.

The research team explained that football provides a useful model for studying social identity and emotional processing in competitive situations as fans exhibit a broad spectrum of behaviors, from spectatorship to intense emotional engagement.

Rivalries run deep, and fans can be very protective of their “home” team and favorite players.

Fans experience a whole range of emotions while watching their team succeed or fail over the course of a match, cheering when they score or raging at a bad decision.

Lead author Professor Francisco Zamorano said: “Soccer fandom provides a high ecological validity model of fanaticism with quantifiable life consequences for health and collective behavior.

“While social affiliation has been widely studied, the neurobiological mechanisms of social identity in competitive settings are unclear, so we set out to investigate the brain mechanisms associated with emotional responses in soccer fans to their teams’ victories and losses.”

For the study, published in the journal Radiology, researchers used functional MRI (fMRI) - a technique that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow - to examine 60 healthy male football fans, aged 20 to 45, of two historic rivals.

Fanaticism was quantified with the Football Supporters Fanaticism Scale, a 13-item scale that measures the fanaticism of fans, assessing two sub-dimensions: “Inclination to Violence” and “Sense of Belongingness.”

Brain imaging data were acquired while participants watched 63 goal sequences from matches involving their favorite team, a rival or a neutral team.

A whole-brain analysis was conducted to compare neural responses when participants viewed their favorite team scoring against an arch rival - classed as a "significant victory" - compared to when the arch rival scored against their team - classed as a "significant defeat" - with control conditions for non-rival goals.

The fMRI results showed that brain activity changed when the fan’s team succeeded or failed.

Zamorano, of Universidad San Sebastián, Santiago, said: “Rivalry rapidly reconfigures the brain’s valuation–control balance within seconds.

“With significant victory, the reward circuitry in the brain is amplified relative to non-rival wins, whereas in significant defeat the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) - which plays an important role in cognitive control - shows paradoxical suppression of control signals.”

He explained that paradoxical suppression refers to the attempt to suppress a thought, feeling or behavior and it results in the opposite outcome.

Higher activation in the reward system regions occurred when the participants’ teams scored against rivals compared to non-rivals, suggesting in-group bonding and social identity reinforcement.

Zamorano noted that the effect is strongest in highly fanatic participants, predicting momentary self-regulatory failure precisely when identity is threatened and accounting for the puzzling ability of otherwise rational people to suddenly “flip” at matches.

He said: “Clinically, the pattern implies a state-dependent vulnerability whereby a brief cooling-off or removal from triggers might permit the dACC/salience control system to recover.

“The same neural signature—reward up, control down under rivalry—likely generalizes beyond sport to political and sectarian conflicts.”

Zamorano says the neural results identify mechanisms that may inform communication, crowd management, and prevention strategies around high-stakes events in the reward amplification and control down-regulation under rivalry.

He said: “Studying fanaticism matters because it reveals generalisable neural mechanisms that can scale from stadium passion to polarisation, violence and population-level public-health harm.

“Most importantly, these very circuits are forged in early life: caregiving quality, stress exposure, and social learning sculpt the valuation–control balance that later makes individuals vulnerable to fanatic appeals.

"Therefore, protecting childhood is the most powerful prevention strategy.

"Societies that neglect early development do not avoid fanaticism; they inherit its harms.”

He says the findings in football fans could also apply to politics, sectarianism and digital tribalism.

For example, he said the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol assault showed how political fanaticism can override democratic norms when identity fusion reaches critical mass.

Zamorano added, “The participants showed classic signs of compromised cognitive control, exactly what our study found in the reduced dACC activation.

“In short, investigating fanaticism is not merely descriptive - it is developmentally informed prevention that protects public health and strengthens democratic cohesion.

"When we discuss fanaticism, the facts speak for themselves.”