Introduction
The science of how the perceived or actual existence of these other people or social standards influences attitudes, sentiments, and actions are referred to as social psychology. Throughout the timeline of humanity, social psychology has been the ultimate determiner of how people interact with each other well or in quite a rough way that could culminate in extensive disagreements. It lays the groundwork for the catalysts and the variables at play and defines the essence by which human interactions can influence the state of affairs. From the quite diverse concepts that are integral to the aspect of social psychology, such as attitude, social cognition, persuasion, self-concept, the dynamics of societal groups, social influence as well as the essence of interpersonal attraction, we can define the aspect of social psychology as well as answer the questions concerning the behavioral nature of human beings. The purpose of social psychology and the accompanying empirical examination of its features is to comprehend behavioral and cognitive processes as they occur spontaneously in a social environment. Nevertheless, just witnessing individuals can affect and modify their behavior.
One such favorable environment to understand social psychology is the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar. The world cup is the world’s ultimate and most influential football stage. Millions of spectators and viewers follow the culminating events and games in the hyperactive sport that brings global national men’s teams to determine the ultimate international football champion. Additionally, the impact of such a global event surpasses the social psychology aspect and overflows to the economy and the participating teams. For instance, the world cup 2022 has estimated prize money of 440 million U.S. dollars (Statista, 2022). Such an amount is mouthwatering to draw millions of football fans as they rally behind their national teams and other countries that seem to be their best. An event like this brings out the essence and qualities of football fans, whose nights and days center on soccer and their favorite squad during the seasons, embracing their personalities. Additionally, such an event is always associated with a perceived emotional and psychological benefit to those who attend and those hosting the event. By analyzing the contextual stage and the psychological, it bears on the team and the fans, we can fathom the positive and negative impacts of the event that depicts one team against the other.
Interpersonal Attraction
Interpersonal attraction, which corresponds to all variables that enable individuals to get along well, develop connections, and affect each other’s attitudes in bad and good ways, is an essential research topic on individuals interacting between themselves. As evident, the World Cup 2022 is set to be the most interactive event that will lead to interactions as fanatics glued to the screens will be discussing the game. Additionally, the spectators, as well as the host, evidently interact among themselves. This interaction is set to bring forth interpersonal attraction by creating a positive attitude and evaluating the other person. The more people are similar in the characteristics of the respective teams they support, the more likely they will have a closer relationship with themselves. According to social interaction theory, individuals will choose connections where other rewards outnumber the expenses and quit those for which the liabilities outweigh the profits (Nickerson, 2021). Thus, as people develop mutual attraction with one another, they are much more likely to embrace pretty rewarding relationships. As a result, people will tend to develop relationships along the lines of football fanatism. This theory affirms that the cost must be less; at most, the benefits should rather be. Thus, people are more likely to develop coherence with others with the same perspectives concerning the football teams participating. Consequently, developing a mutual relationship with an opponent or a fan of a team that seems to deliver ultimate competition to the personally acknowledged team takes time and effort.
Group Dynamics and Social Affiliation
Football competition is about groups depicted against each other. People tend to embrace being associated with groups due to their inherent desire to develop their differential identity from others based on group memberships. Pursuing desirable differentiation in one’s collectivism becomes a justification for having unfavorable attitudes and perceptions about entire groups of people in our context and, therefore, for intolerance and, eventually, prejudice (Harwood, 2020). The competition tends to bring on diverse groups with individualistic traits identical to their group. Additionally, these groups tend to influence the competition and affect performance as they provide the necessary social facilitation to the players, thus providing the teams with positive reinforcements. Teams that lack the necessary social affiliation are demoralized and thus tend to perform poorly in football competitions. Members within a team’s expected social identification impact the balance of powers, which refers to how groups interact with and perceive one another. Such views and acts, in turn, form participants’ personalities well within interactions. Such group dynamics are driven by the need of human nature to belong. People embrace belonging to maintain strong relationships that will have positive reinforcement in their lives. For instance, people will feel proud to be associated with their national team participating in the world cup series. The need to be affiliated with a particular group can be attributed as a factor of the person’s attributes; thus, they will tend to show differences in their choice of affiliation due to the individual differences in their need for affiliation. Additionally, being a football fan corresponds to the need for identification within the societal identity (Zelyurt, 2019). Thus, considering the current event of World Cup 2022, people will support or rather embrace being a member of particular football fanatical group due to the essence of their character and the feeling of the need to belong. Additionally, the various social affiliations tend to impact the psychological essence of the participating teams, as teams that lack the backup of the social affiliations tend to be demoralized and thus bear a high possibility of losing the game.
Social influence
Social influence is the persuasion power that some people possess to draw more people into their societal groupings and respective schools of thought. It is among the fundamental concepts of social psychology as we tend to understand the World Cup tournament’s psychological impact, social influence, and conformity. Conformity makes individuals think and act like the group they perceive to join. For instance, non-citizen supporters of the Brazilian team will tend to carry flags and adorn themselves in a fashion that conforms to the Brazilian spectator group. Additionally, social influence goes beyond the field and has become quite prevalent on social media platforms. Since football fans tend to act as football agents of their respective teams, the construction of societal groupings online tends to draw large followers as they resort to discussing football-related issues (Sayan et al., 2021). Additionally, research demonstrates that online fan organizations are essential for their loyalty to sports teams and their ability to serve as social transformation agents. Furthermore, better fan motivation when utilizing online soccer communities is linked to increased commitment and loyalty to joint aims among site users (Sayan et al., 2021). As such, the impact of the footballing stage on social influence cannot be underestimated. Football fans will tend to develop social groupings as per the influence of their team affiliation. Additionally, the significant associations may discuss even more pertinent issues that influence the different social constructions.
Attitudes
Football fanatism is much more about emotions and attitudes, and such eruptions drive the football industry, the respective teams, and the associated fan base. Football supporters feel several attitudes about their club, particularly on game days. These emotions impact hooliganism, enthusiasm, involvement, match attendees, and marketing consumption. Furthermore, it has been discovered that the costs involved with being a football fanatic do not affect the fans’ attitudes. The simple reality that price is irrelevant for tournaments with the brand team confirms that fans are motivated more by feelings and thoughts than by logical principles. Thus, certain facts become pertinent; a great team playing against a weaker team is not considered an exhilarating game, and the effect of brand-team playing is relatively more important than the uncertainty of outcome. Additionally, as the more fantastic footballing stage brings forth the finest of the footballing talents as well as famous football stars and stakeholders such as referees and commentators, research indicates that being closer to these famous personalities has a stronger positive reinforcement on the spectators’ attitude than the emotion associated with quite intense games (Shakina, Gasparetto & Barajas, 2020).
Additionally, the attitudes associated with footballing bear the potential of culminating in dire circumstances due to extreme football fanatism. Several instances have been documented where football fans’ negative attitudes have become violent. Thus, the world cup stage is set to affect the psychological essence of footballing fans based on the results of the respective games. Fans become happy and develop a more positive attitude if their favorite team beats their opponents. However, the loss of a team is set to detrimentally affect the psychological attitudes of the various team players and the team fans.
Conclusion
Indeed, the real or imagined presence of other people bears the power to define the thoughts, feelings, and individual behaviors of individuals. Human behavior is an aspect of the interaction between the real or perceived social states and situations that could result from interactions between people and the mental states of the individuals. Thus, considering the prevalence of global football fanatism and the contemporary FIFA World Cup men’s football in Qatar in 20222, the culminating interactions will influence the behaviors of the teams and the spectators. The fans may easily develop mutual interpersonal relationships between themselves of the same team affiliation. Additionally, social affiliation is quite evident as fans seek positive reinforcement from the feeling of being a member of a specific dominant team. Social influence is also apparent as people discuss the respective event on social media platforms. Moreover, the event will shape the attitudes of the followers of the participating teams as people will be happy if their favorite team wins or rather develop poor attitudes in the event their team loses. Thus, the World Cup tournament can shape the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of the social members who choose to embrace the event.
References
Harwood, J. (2020). Social identity theory. The International Encyclopedia of Media Psychology, pp. 1–7.
Nickerson, C. (2021, October 28). The Social Exchange Theory in Relationships. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-social-exchange-theory.html
Sayan, A., Gorgulu, V., Erhart, I., & Aslanbay, Y. (2021). A social influence perspective on uses of online football forums: The case with Turkish football fans. In Research Anthology on Business Strategies, Health Factors, and Ethical Implications in Sports and eSports (pp. 373-390). IGI Global.
Shakina, E., Gasparetto, T., & Barajas, A. (2020). Football fans’ emotions: Uncertainty against brand perception. Frontiers in Psychology, pp. 11, 659.
Statista. (2022, November 24). FIFA financial contribution to teams 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/328497/fifa-world-cup-prize-money/
Zelyurt, M. K. (2019). Being a football fan, identification, and identity: from being a fan to fanaticism. Sportif Bakıș: Spor ve Eğitim Bilimleri Dergisi, 6(1), 85-105.
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