Generosity in Soccer Fans: assay of a typological instrument
Generosity, Football Fans, Parochial Altruism and Typology
Violence associated with soccer, or hooliganism, is a global phenomenon that causes upheavals in society. The view that football fans could be divided into types brings new possibilities for research about the evolutionary perspective on cooperative group dynamics through social dilemmas. Parochial altruism, understood as an association between group bias and antagonism to other groups, is the relevant representative of this dynamic, and its investigation through economic games can be done by measuring the generosity of individuals. However, methodological disregard for the costs inherent in cooperation can make the results less representative of the intensity of affiliation to a group, and hence of the motivations behind parochial altruism. In addition, the relationship between cooperative conflict and cognition suggests that physiological variables can influence how individuals deal with social dilemmas. Thus, by hypothesizing, that different types of supporters differ in degree of cooperative motivation. This project will investigate the pertinence of the division of the population in types, and differences in the generosity and neuroendocrine profile of the fans. To this end, parochial behavior will be attributed to the adoption of the paradigm of effort-based decision-making, in order to faithfully represent the fans' affiliative intensity.