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by tghw 2361 days ago
Think about how a lot of fans speak about their teams.

"How did the Bulls do last night?"

"We won, but just barely."

Part of being a fan is vicarious competition, both against the other team and the other teams' fans.

2 comments

Last year there were reports out about how watching sport might be tricking us into thinking we've participated in such a way that it increases sedentary behaviour.
Interesting. My friends that watch the most sports seem to be the most overweight. I expected this to be the opposite, but maybe this is normal. Probably just anecdotal.
It's apparently been studied:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3890601/

In a sentence, "Participants that watched sports every day were at higher risk of obesity [odds ratio = 1.39, 95% CI, 1.15, 1.68) after adjustment for age, sex, smoking, alcohol, physical activity, total TV time, disability, and self-rated health."

Based on what they're controlling for, and assuming that the conclusions hold, my guess would be that watching sports on TV is also associated with increased snacking.

Sure, but if people can enjoy vicarious competition, they can presumably enjoy the real thing too.