We all know that love and encouragement can make us feel better. But can they also make us perform better, especially when big money is on the line? A recent study from University College London looked into this by studying something unique in the world of football. They found that having fans and moral support can make a massive difference in how well a team plays. In fact, when teams don’t have their supporters, they are 20% more likely to lose a game.
Whether it’s a motivating speech, someone who listens, or just having someone there, moral support is essential in life. Surprisingly, there hasn’t been much scientific proof of how it affects our actions. This study fills that gap and shows that moral support has a big impact on how well we perform.
Even in the highly competitive world of football, where players get paid well for performing at their best, moral support matters. It can be the deciding factor between winning and losing a match.
“What’s important about our research is that we show and quantify the causal effect of moral support on performance, even in settings in which high monetary incentives are at stake,” the researchers explain.
Moral support
The researchers accept that showing a clear link between moral support and subsequent behaviors is extremely difficult, not least because moral support can’t really be controlled in an experimental setting.
“The major empirical challenge resides in the fact that moral support is essentially endogenous. People choose whether to supply or demand moral support, the extent of it, to whom to supply it and from whom to demand it,” they explain. “The paper addresses this challenge by taking advantage of an exogenous negative shock on moral support caused by an unexpected change of law in the Argentinean football league.”
The ideal conditions materialized in Argentina after authorities banned visiting supporters from attending games as a result of the death of a spectator. This ensured that only home fans were present at games.
Chances of success
By analyzing data from 1,320 games played before and after fan attendance bans, researchers made a significant discovery: when visiting teams don’t have their fans in the stadium, they are 20% more likely to lose a game. Additionally, the chances of the visiting team giving up more goals than the home team increase by 1.3 times under these circumstances.
Crucially, the researchers found that the drop in performance was directly linked to the absence of fan support. They ruled out other possible explanations like biased referees or changes in team strategies. Interestingly, smaller teams are hit harder when they lack fan support, while bigger teams only suffer a performance dip when they face similarly strong opponents. This suggests that fan support helps level the playing field in matchups with unequal strengths.
In a world where encouragement and motivation are essential for personal and professional success, this study highlights the powerful impact of fan support and how it can unlock human potential on the football field. It’s a finding that the researchers believe is equally applicable in the workplace too.
“We suspect that moral support will be even more consequential in settings with lower monetary incentives, but this is still an open question,” they conclude.
