When You Watch Sports, Your Brain Thinks You’re Playing

http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-unique-neurology-of-the-sports-fans-brain

by lxm • 8 years ago

338 146 8 years ago

baby• 8 years ago

So is it a good way to lose weight :)?

No, because “brain” and “muscles” are different things. In fact, it's the opposite, it's a way to satisfy a desire which would reinforce health and weight loss, without actually reaping any of the benefits.

buckminster• 8 years ago

Didn't some recent research show that merely visualising exercise had measurable physical benefits?

olavgg• 8 years ago

I watch fotball while exercising on my spinning bike. Highly recommend!

mpweiher• 8 years ago

Probably the opposite, because your brain thinks it did exercise, so: hungry!

Except you didn't actually burn the calories...

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

as a teen it was so strong for soccer that I could keep my legs from hitting the table legs when eating dinner

83457• 8 years ago

I wrestled growing up and did some grappling. When watching MMA matches for years i could not sit still once they hit the ground. Was like I was working through the movements I wanted them to make. Would drive my wife crazy sitting beside me. It was all subconscious... usually just tensing my muscles and leaning a certain direction plus my hands would get clamy. My wife would have to point out to me what I was doing and i'd try to control myself lol

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

yeah, you're in it mentally, at least you want to be

fjsolwmv4• 8 years ago

What does this mean? Do people usually kick table legs while earing?

agumonkey3• 8 years ago

I was so drawn by the game that I couldn't keep my legs from doing what I'd do if I was on the pitch. Eco friendly VR if you will

gustavmarwin• 8 years ago

Can we get the brain excited about positive-sum games? Dogs can run after a ball, maybe as humans we can do better? Maybe we ought to do much better?

jcims2• 8 years ago

It’s not just sports, this happens with YouTube for me. Somehow watching people do cool things with CNC sates my desire to spend $15K on a Tormach.

lobotryas• 8 years ago

Let's be fair. Even if those videos weren't there the chances of most people investing 15k on the hope of sticking to learning a complex skill are slim.

abakker• 8 years ago

From the other side: watched the videos, bought a ton of stuff to have my own machine shop. Now the videos are even more relevant - it’s the little things that mean so much. (Like the fun tricks to know something is parallel or square or the different ways to measure something).

It was really expensive, and I already had a background in automotive work and woodwork to some degree, and a decent IT skill set, but damn, machining is really gratifying.

fjsolwmv4• 8 years ago

People in general love buying home gyms and computers and clothes and vehicles and stuff they never use to their potential.

SamReidHughes2• 8 years ago

I happens with programming for me too. I can't watch The Social Network without pausing it and thinking I need to go code something.

pbhjpbhj• 8 years ago

Isn't that the reverse effect? I could never watch football (soccer) as a child - why would I want to watch other people having fun when I can go and do it myself! Invariably I'd respond by going out to play [with a] football.

convolvatron• 8 years ago

just curious...how much do you have to watch, I don't seem to have gotten there yet.

TheJoYo• 8 years ago

when I'm playing Mario Cart my brain thinks throwing shells is a reasonable method of dealing with traffic.

supergirl• 8 years ago

the word brain appears once in the article content, once in the title and once in an ad...

Godel_unicode5• 8 years ago

It appears twice in the article, along with the words neurochemicals and neuroscience. Thank goodness clippy isn't in charge of rating scholastic merits.

Edit: also biochemistry, biochemical...

hrktb• 8 years ago

very interesting study. A caveat to the title:

And the rules don’t apply as well to casual fans, Wann cautions. “This effect is most prominent among those who are most intense. In order to really reap the well-being benefits of fan identification, it needs to be a central part of your overall social identity.” The biochemical aspects of fandom only serve to reinforce those good feelings.

It’s not just watching sports, you need to be fully invested in the experience in the first place. I think the same would be true to anything we truely engage, like a chess or shogi live streams, or really anything we intimately associate with.

craftyguy• 8 years ago

Like politics (at least in the US). The similarities between fanatic sports fans and fanatic political party 'members'/voters are quite great. Voters generally want their 'team' to win, even if they know nothing substantial about the candidate on the 'team' they are voting for.

stemcc• 8 years ago

Sadly true. One can't help but fear the dark extremities of this identification.

quasarj• 8 years ago

Very interesting! I was going to propose that maybe this is why watching sports (including esports) is not something I am the least bit interested in.

I was going to say, maybe my brain doesn't work like it's supposed to... but maybe I just never got into it.

taeric• 8 years ago

Do those have to be competing statements? Maybe you never got into sports because your brain doesn't work that way?

brightball• 8 years ago

With sports there is often a major community aspect at play as well.

I didn’t fully appreciate football growing up until I played. Now I’m so zoned into little details...

travisjungroth• 8 years ago

Similarly, I think that to enjoy watching baseball, you have to care about the outcome. It’s a game of anticipation. If you don’t care, it’s like gambling with Monopoly money. It just doesn’t matter.

Football, for example, is a bit different. There’s more of a guarantee of action.

stock_toaster• 8 years ago

I have enjoyed baseball games without caring about the winner. It is like watching a slow chess match, with occasional running.

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 8 years ago

Does it? I get bored to death and start asking myself why I'm not playing rather than watching others playing

corobo• 8 years ago

It's specifically about fans though - you have to be absolutely fanatical about the sport. If you're bored to death you're not into the sport, so you don't get the same effect

isostatic2• 8 years ago

I get bored to death whether I've been forced to watch football or play football. Not sure what's worse.

Fortunately haven't been forced to do sport since I was 14.

emilfihlman• 8 years ago

Not really surprised since we can learn by watching.

davidpaulyoung• 8 years ago

The same happens when listening to a singing performance. Citation not offered.

daledavies• 8 years ago

If this is something you're interested in, I'm sure you'll find that citation in this book...

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/generative-processes...

mjfern• 8 years ago

Maybe this is why toddlers love to watch shows like Ryan's Toy Review on YouTube, which is just a kid playing with a variety toys with his parents.

randie63• 8 years ago

Its sad that the parent's aren't playing with the toddler in the first place and let him watch videos instead.

Someday if I decide when its time to get kids, I want to be in a position where I can have as much time as I want for the kids.

Vaskivo• 8 years ago

I believe that is correct.

First link from searching "why kids like unboxing videos":

https://www.mother.ly/parenting/science-explains-why-your-ki...

lgregg• 8 years ago

It happened with me last night watching the movie Skyscraper, I could feel my body twitching during the fight scenes.

27182818284• 8 years ago

I haven't skateboarded in more than a decade, but I've noticed that if I walk by a good looking handrail or concrete ledge, my brain still automatically starts picturing 50/50 grinds, different tail-slide combinations, and more. I didn't play football in high school, but I have to imagine it is something similar that continues on.

tomjakubowski• 8 years ago

There was a time when I was downright obsessed with co-op armed robbery video game Payday 2, and even months after I stopped playing, I could hardly enter a bank lobby or art gallery without starting to "case the joint".

Wingman4l7• 8 years ago

What did your brain do whenever you saw an armored car? :P

Bradenski• 8 years ago

I skated for most of my youth and have the same thing going on. I was very happy when someone from my area won SOTY also. I don't really see the same magnitude of fandom during SLS ever occuring. Sometimes people really hate Nyjah or really fan boy for Joslin. Maybe we'll see regional skateboarding teams in the future, but for now we can enjoy skateboarding purely being about the talent. The Olympics will definitely test the waters for this.

extralego2• 8 years ago

Be glad you didn’t end up working in that industry. Whenever I walk by a staircase or handrail, I’m just reminded of my poor career planning.

I got some unbelievable memories though. I honestly do not believe some of them.

gukov• 8 years ago

Similar can be sad about people getting emotional when watching something like the Bachelorette (or anything sad/happy, really) no?

Bluestrike2• 8 years ago

Or reading.[0][1][2] When we read a book, we put ourselves into the positions of the characters and our brains react as if it were so.

0. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/brain.2013.0166

1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/novel-finding-rea...

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuros...

Eric_WVGG• 8 years ago

That certainly explains the success of “competence porn”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10744879/Are-yo...

paganel• 8 years ago

I think it’s more than just a combination of happy vs unhappy, I can personally confirm that the testosterone buildup from watching a sports match of a team you really care about (even on tv) is very much real. But, just as the study says, you need to not be just a casual watcher, you need to be “invested”, to have a real “feel” for the game.

Just as an example, I’ve had nightmares after this spring’s Real vs Juventus Champions League match which saw the Italians get eliminated in the 92nd minute after a questionable penalty call (I’m a Juve fan) and to this day my heart still feels a little contraction, so to speak, a little “what could have been?”, when thinking about how the Swedes equalized us, Romanians, in the QF of the 1994 World Cup after an error from our goalkeeper (if he hadn’t committed that error we would have faced the Brazilians in the semis, meaning a literal dream come true for us). There have been 24 years since then but the feeling is still inside of me, and I think it will stay with me until the day I’ll walk off this planet. Sports and caring about sports can be both one of the most beautiful and one of the most painful experiences in one’s life.

jpindar• 8 years ago

Speaking of "what could have been"... just ask anyone from New England about 18-1. Actually, don't do this unless you dislike them.

combatentropy• 8 years ago

Yes, I was surprised that they did not at least explore similarities with moviegoing.

AndrewUnmuted4• 8 years ago

This lines up well with McLuhan's revelation that the search for identity is usually correlated with violence [0]. By recognizing organized sports as a "highly-organized form of violence" (his words) you can start to see the corollary.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULI3x8WIxus

extralego2• 8 years ago

Oof. That is a heavy 6:40 clip of discourse. Thanks for sharing.

baxtr• 8 years ago

In that sense FIFA is the world’s most successful peace organization funneling national violence into sports

AndrewUnmuted4• 8 years ago

This isn't that crazy of a concept, to me. FIFA does achieve rather stunning results, given its breadth.

Though I do hear about conspiracies involving fixed games and about FIFA corruption from time to time, I imagine that they've done a lot more good for the world recently than the UN has.

Edit:

Sports are in general associated with some meaningful global events. The Olympics recently demonstrated this fact w/r/t North Korea.

sametmax6• 8 years ago

We had games for that for ever. We can't get gladiators anymore so we have football, races and ring fights.

"Panem et circenses" is hardly a new concept.

vanderZwan2• 8 years ago

"Football is war" - Rinus "The General" Michels.

For the non-soccer fans: Michels was the trainer who invented the Total Football playstyle and was named coach of the century by FIFA in 1999[0]. Although I just learned from Wikipedia that the above quote is taken out of context, I always thought it was an insightful one: football is ritual warfare. And as the article suggests, we're probably better off for its existence, because those tribal instincts are still in our DNA, and they need to come out one way or the other.

And I say that as someone who really dislikes football, partially because of the tribalism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinus_Michels

buzzert• 8 years ago

“Smash TV” might come true after all!

nitwit005• 8 years ago

"When You Watch Sports, Your Brain Thinks You’re Playing" doesn't match the article title, or appear in the text.

RyJones• 8 years ago

it is the title of the webpage, though. Pretty strange.

fjsolwmv4• 8 years ago

Pretty common to have clickbat headlines that don't match content. This was true even before clicks were invented.

astura2• 8 years ago

This actually happens quite a bit.

chiefalchemist• 8 years ago

Both studies were of groups as a subset of larger groups. That is, these fans were not individuals home alone. I'm curious to know how that might effect their body's reactions.

kilovoltaire• 8 years ago

Only half relevant, but I'm reminded of "body english"

bodily motions made in a usually unconscious effort to influence the progress of a propelled object (such as a ball)

buboard• 8 years ago

when your brain watches anything, it thinks it is doing it. There is no reason to have 2 brains, just because of TV and cinema exist.

next up, you lose weight by watching people run. although i think believe someone has shown that already.

djmips2• 8 years ago

"it has been found that people who had watched promotional exercise videos tended to consume more calories than they would normally, despite having not done any exercise themselves" https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-running-blog/20...

kleiba• 8 years ago

Unfortunately, my hips don't.

cbanek• 8 years ago

I wonder if this is why watching video games / e-Sports is also getting popular, even though people complain there's not much physical skill involved.

(Yes, I do watch professional gaming myself)

eduren• 8 years ago

As both a traditional sports fan and esports fan I agree that it can invoke the same responses.

I see the "lack of physical skill" argument a lot and my typical argument against it is endurance and mental performance. Esports players at their peak train for 8+ hours a day and can compete for 4+ in some longer events. Doing anything with your body for that long takes physical and mental conditioning.

I also see a lot of traditional sports detractors saying "What's the point of just watching someone play the video game, seems boring" and it really blows my mind how much of a disconnect there is.

chupasaurus• 8 years ago

can compete for 4+ in some longer events. Dota's TI2 had a weird schedule where winner of lower bracket had to play 2 Bo3 and Grand Final at the same day. And that team won the tournament!

moretai5• 8 years ago

I don't think there should even be a debate about what's nobler, purer, or whatever for physical vs mental, athlete vs nerd. There is something that seems to be pervasive in all forms of competition, and that is domination. We've all felt it if you have played any sort of competitive game. Basketball to call of duty. That feeling of helplessness, or that rush of just straight up beasting. And if you can harness that domination, there seems to be an avenue for money. Soccer, COD , Halo. Competition has a tendency to funnel money.

APCarr2• 8 years ago

One thing I have noticed is when watching helmet-cam footage of my own rides off-road here in Borneo I get tensed up, hyper-vigilant about the terrain, angle of the bike, gear and revs etc.

I KNOW exactly what is going to happen, I KNOW I'm watching a recording, yet even when making an effort not to, I still notice my body is reacting and effectively re-living the experience. Spooky.

quarkral• 8 years ago

I used to watch tons of Starcraft, but I feel like at least half the reason was to find inspiration for new strategies and playstyles whenever I got bored of playing standard. For example I pretty much never watched the matchup between the other two races I played.

Whereas I feel like the same can hardly be said for traditional sports. I don't see how you gain any strategical insight into the game of soccer by watching the world cup, at least on the level that a normal viewer could implement.

adreamingsoul• 8 years ago

not for me

xfer• 8 years ago

One of the reasons why "backseat-gaming" is used a lot in online gaming when someone streams.

retox• 8 years ago

I read a paper more than a decade ago about monitoring simian brains. They noticed (I think it was by accident) that when a chimp watched another eat an ice-cream, the same areas of the brain 'lit up' as if the chimp itself was eating. It makes sense when you think about how invested people can get in their favourite characters in TV and film.

JohnJamesRambo• 8 years ago

This would explain why watching your favorite sports team lose has been shown to lower testosterone.

pretendscholar• 8 years ago

I shudder to think what watching the Redskins year after year has done to my body then.

joncrane• 8 years ago

It raises your testosterone when they win, though!

mfsch• 8 years ago

The whole notion of “your brain thinks …” is a common interpretation of fMRI studies, but I think it is not very accurate or useful. It contains the idea that what your brain does is somehow separate from what “you” are thinking and doing. In practice, what we see in fMRI pictures is just the what the current thinking and activity looks like in the brain. So even if you saw the same patterns of activity for people watching and playing sports, that wouldn’t mean that the brain “thinks you are playing”, it just means that your thinking might be similar during both activities. As others have mentioned the article does not reference the title, so this is a comment on the title only.

taneq• 8 years ago

It contains the idea that what your brain does is somehow separate from what “you” are thinking and doing

It's like those studies that can detect decision making a split second before the person is consciously aware that they've made the decision. It's usually presented as "'you' don't really make the decision", as if that person exists apart from their brain.

mc32• 8 years ago

can detect decision making a split second before the person is consciously aware that they've made the decision.

I think the revelation is that the decision people make is the negative one, that the affirmative one is the default and the negative one is the one which requires conscious effort.

ggg9990• 8 years ago

fMRI studies are like studies showing which transistors are active during certain computations. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t.

Negative1• 8 years ago

Right, seems like a better way to describe this is to say "Watching sports activates the same neural pathways as playing sports".

izzydata• 8 years ago

Which is not very profound. The thought that looking at a ball being kicked and kicking a ball activates similar neural pathways sounds incredibly obvious.

snek• 8 years ago

this reminds me of that old article about exercising your thumb vs imagining exercising your thumb... can't find the link to it though

djmips2• 8 years ago

I used to twitch when I watched hockey, when the pass came and I shot. I was fully aware that I was 'playing' at that time.

DoingIsLearning• 8 years ago

If you are interested in reading more there is a lot of research in this area, which would fall under the search term "mental imagery".

APCarr2• 8 years ago

The basic concept has been known to copywriters for a long time.

It can be used to create a sense of ownership by encouraging the reader to 'experience' the product being sold, just like you're more likely to buy a product after playing with it in a store.

The effect is weak but it certainly does exist.

bryanrasmussen• 8 years ago

Your brain reacts as if you're playing.

bedane• 8 years ago

OK What about porn?

JoeAltmaier• 8 years ago

Ah! That's why I have no affinity for sports. Never played much. Basketball is just 10 guys running up and down the court, almost always making a basket. Yet for my friend Dean, he's leaning and jerking in his seat, experiencing every moment. Plays a lot.

mkane848• 8 years ago

Eh, I play a lot and still don't particularly care for watching most of the time. At least not enough to be invested enough for a season. I'd rather play than watch, though oddly enough I do enjoy watching Counter-Strike (which I also play, though not nearly to the same level I got with sports)

swaggyBoatswain• 8 years ago

There really should be a comparison between both traditional sports, and eSports.

My first esports (Dota TI internationals in seattle) outing really felt like I was actually playing. I could appreciate all the moves that were being made even if I couldn't actually do it in front of a computer.

Because esports is mostly done also sitting on a computer, there's also less of a "barrier" than say in watching soccer. You aren't actively moving while watching soccer

isostatic2• 8 years ago

I suspect that this is related to this:

"Research into the link between domestic abuse and the football has shown that reports of domestic abuse increase when the England team win or lose a football match and that the instances increase with every World Cup tournament."

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/world-cup-2018-engl...

m0rphy99• 8 years ago

In soccer you often see the coach standing on the side of the pitch trying to do an imaginary heading of the ball when one of his players has a clear opportunity to score, as if he's playing himself. Our brain is funny sometimes.

return_True• 8 years ago

After 10 years of coaching youth sports and observing parents, I think this has something to do with 'mirror neurons', the ability of our brain to watch, learn from and empathize with others. Just like you have an immersive effect with a sci-fi movie and empathize with the characters and feel their plights, so do sports fans. When it's your kid playing of course, it's intensified. Of course, many are just straight up living vicariously through their kids.

When You Watch Sports, Your Brain Thinks You’re Playing

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