Opinion – Luciano Melo: Football is an example of us against them, violence and unity as a group cause

“Football is a box of surprises”. Yes, a very small box, without room for much. “The ball punishes”, that nothing, what punishes is the competence of the opponent. “Who doesn’t, takes”, another fallacy, if that were the case, the score zero to zero would not be so frequent. My vain crankiness gives way, sport is a universe of inspiration for good phrase writers. How about the synthesis of the playwright Nelson Rodrigues: “Football was, in this land, a passionate, somber, cruel sport. The fan would already enter the field shouting: — Kill! Skin!”?

Nelson Rodrigues makes references to the individual who abdicated himself to congruently join others, united they share convictions and act synchronously. Football is a channel for the irresistible tendency to form affiliations, an inherent human behavior.

Religions, political views, ethnic identity are other channels, whose themes supply certain brain networks, biologically programmed for us to form associations. It all goes back to our ancestors, prosperous by organizing themselves into alliances, mutual collaboration harboring greater chances of survival. Being in a group meant, and still means, being protected, with access to rights and privileges. While paying the price of fulfilling obligations and following rituals.

Under similar circumstances, intragroup cohesion strengthens, other constraints are judgmental biases. Allies treat each other with greater empathy, while arbitrarily assigning negative adjectives to non-congregators. Communities competed and competed to obtain a monopoly on resources, biases created more justifications for unity and violence. It is limited to “us against them”, in this context, seeing a competitor’s misfortune can cause a special pleasure.

For passionate fans, football teams are essential sources of identity, supported by symbols, titles, cultural values ​​and even territorial domains. A modern adaptation of a plot with prehistoric origins. The mental state of fan groups resembles the mental state of members of other social organizations. The neural basis of fanaticism, an example of extreme affiliation, with its consequences of sacrifice and fury, is probably the same for football or any other topic.

Francisco Zamorano, a Chilean researcher, demonstrated that fans, when watching the defeat of their “heart” team, suffer as a consequence a reduction of activity in the brain areas responsible for detecting errors and monitoring conflicts. Basar Bilgiç, a scientist from Istanbul, pointed out that the brains of football fanatics respond more to pleasure and are more easily motivated.

In practical terms, team-obsessed neurons are more influenced by soccer results. Inside the brains of extremist fans, defeat shuts down systems of self-control and adaptive behavior. The setback, for these people, will be understood as an injustice, an offense against a cause, an attack on revered symbols.

There are probably some explanations for the irrational phenomena that occur in and around football stadiums, such as the suicides of Brazilians after the end of the 1950 World Cup, the rise of Hooligans in Europe and the murders in fights between organized fans. It may also be that in this way we explain some other movements of fanatics, of non-sports organizations.