What Happened To The Brain While Watching The Favorite Football Team?

JAKARTA - If you've seen a football fan overflow his emotions when a favorite team wins or vice versa goes berserk when his team loses, you might think they're too much.

Usually they will say that it just happens. Their love for football controls themselves, making it difficult to act rationally.

Although it sounds strange that adults can get carried away with such emotions by a sport, a recent study shows it does have a basis, although not entirely.

Reporting from Euro News, a study published in the journal Radiology on November 11, 2025 found certain areas in the active brain when fans watched their favorite team compete. This activation triggers emotions and behavior that can be very positive or very negative.

Researchers from a university in Chile use fMRI technology, scanning that tracks brain activity through blood flow to 60 men who are football fans. They are classified as regular spectators, fans, or fanatics based on how much they love football.

As the scan took place, the participants were shown a goal trailer from their favorite team match, rival team, or neutral team.

Fanatism is considered to use Football Supporters Fanaticism Scale which assesses 13 aspects including a tendency to violence and a sense of belonging to the team.

Those who are categorized as fanatics are considered to have very strong identity ties so that the success of the team can affect how they view themselves.

The fMRI results showed when the favorite team scored against rivals, a brain area related to the active reward system. This area usually reacts to food, sex, and addictive drugs.

On the other hand, when the participating team lost to rivals, the brain actually activated parts related to social processing and perceptions. But interestingly, the activity at the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), the part of the brain that plays a role in controlling emotions and monitoring conflicts, has actually decreased.

"Competition sparked a rapid change in balance between assessment and control in the brain in just seconds," said study lead author Francisco Zamorano of Universidad San Sebastiwas.

This means that when the favorite team scored against rivals, the reward system in the brain worked much harder than when the goal was created against the regular team.

This effect is the strongest in those who are very fanatical.

They are more difficult to control emotions when their identity as supporters feel threatened explaining why people who are usually calm can change completely during matches.

Researchers also say that this brain mechanism does not only appear in football's fanaticism. Similar patterns can be seen in other types of fanaticism, from religion to politics.

Zamorano gave an example of the incident of the invasion of the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, in which political fanaticism defeats democratic norms when a group of the same identities acts together.

The decline in dACC activity in these incidents shows compromise on cognitive ability to control behavior.

The good news is that many human brain circuits have been formed since childhood. This means that there is a way to prevent this extreme reaction from developing into dangerous behavior as an adult.

According to Zamorano, the quality of parenting, stress levels, and social learning since childhood have formed a balance between self-assessment and control.

"Protecting childhood is the most powerful prevention strategy," he said.