Psychology Study Reveals Your Sports Team Is Bringing You Down

Nothing feels better than coming off a strong weekend where all the stars align. Your date went well, you got through that heavy work week productively, and your favorite team dominated the competition.
But with all pinnacles must come nadirs, and the same correlation applies inversely, with science attributing your productivity being woven together with the performance of your favorite sports team.
Research published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology has illuminated the nature of personal productivity and its association with sports.
After tracking participants who were fans of soccer in the fields of work performance, emotional mood, and engagement over the course of four weeks revealed that within all metrics the participants had lower values when their team of preference suffered defeat.
There are various reasons as to why this association exists, but the reason that stands out is sports identity.
Like any large organization, these entities reflect our own personal beliefs and values, and our attachment at any level, therefore, becomes directly controlled by their successes and failures.
According to Panagiotis Gkorezis, Ph.D. of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, co-author of the study, notes that “when they get demolished, it can feel like you’ve lost something important in your personal life.”
Affiliation allows individuals to feel connected and play a part of a larger narrative, but by attaching this level of integration into daily achievements higher structures inevitably sway your performance.
So get some independence, and stop watching sports.