Negative emotions concentrate while positive emotions diffuse in football fan rivalries
- 1Institute of Sociology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Abstract
Background: Research on negativity bias demonstrates that negative information receives disproportionate cognitive attention at the individual level, but how this psychological mechanism shapes collective emotional patterns remains unclear. We investigate whether communities systematically concentrate negative emotions on fewer targets while distributing positive emotions more broadly. Methods: We analyze 36,223 German football fans’ reports of loved and hated clubs, measuring attention concentration using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). We distinguish between outgoing concentration (how communities allocate their own attention) and incoming concentration (how attention from others focuses on particular targets), testing whether concentration differs between positive and negative affect. Results: Negative attention was significantly more concentrated than positive attention for both outgoing (M = 0.36 vs M = 0.23, p < 0.001) and incoming ties (M = 0.41 vs M = 0.33, p = 0.011). Love and hate concentration are weakly correlated (r = 0.26–0.32), indicating independent processes. Structural factors predict incoming but not outgoing concentration (Pseudo R2 = 0.14–0.35 vs R2 = 0.47–0.49), revealing asymmetric mechanisms of attention allocation versus attraction. Conclusions: Communities face cognitive constraints that produce systematic asymmetries in how they distribute emotional attention. These findings highlight how cognitive constraints shape collective emotional structures, with implications for political polarization, consumer behavior, and conflict dynamics.
Related
- Corticothalamic circuits drive voluntary physical exercise-mediated relief of surgery-induced negative emotions in mice
- Individualized brain-body signatures of positive emotions revealed by large-scale multimodal neurophysiological recording
- The dynamic features of long-term habituation of negative emotions: evidence from eye-tracking and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis research.
- Distinct neural oscillatory patterns underlying music-evoked emotions: Evidence from MEG and subjective reports
- When Teachers Smile or Frown: A Profile-Based Analysis of Achievement Emotions
BibTeX
@article{grund2026negative,
title = {{Negative emotions concentrate while positive emotions diffuse in football fan rivalries}},
author = {Thomas U. Grund},
journal = {PLOS One},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0356757},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0356757},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Negative emotions concentrate while positive emotions diffuse in football fan rivalries
AU - Thomas U. Grund
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/24
JO - PLOS One
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0356757
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0356757
AB - Background: Research on negativity bias demonstrates that negative information receives disproportionate cognitive attention at the individual level, but how this psychological mechanism shapes collective emotional patterns remains unclear. We investigate whether communities systematically concentrate negative emotions on fewer targets while distributing positive emotions more broadly. Methods: We analyze 36,223 German football fans’ reports of loved and hated clubs, measuring attention concentration using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). We distinguish between outgoing concentration (how communities allocate their own attention) and incoming concentration (how attention from others focuses on particular targets), testing whether concentration differs between positive and negative affect. Results: Negative attention was significantly more concentrated than positive attention for both outgoing (M = 0.36 vs M = 0.23, p < 0.001) and incoming ties (M = 0.41 vs M = 0.33, p = 0.011). Love and hate concentration are weakly correlated (r = 0.26–0.32), indicating independent processes. Structural factors predict incoming but not outgoing concentration (Pseudo R2 = 0.14–0.35 vs R2 = 0.47–0.49), revealing asymmetric mechanisms of attention allocation versus attraction. Conclusions: Communities face cognitive constraints that produce systematic asymmetries in how they distribute emotional attention. These findings highlight how cognitive constraints shape collective emotional structures, with implications for political polarization, consumer behavior, and conflict dynamics.
SN - 1932-6203
ER -