TY - JOUR
T1 - What Motivates People to Do and Watch Sports? Exploring the Effect of Sex, Age, Partner Status, and Parenthood
AU - Apostolou, Menelaos
AU - Lambrianou, Rafael
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Springer International Publishing.
PY - 2017/3
Y1 - 2017/3
N2 - People exhibit a strong interest in doing and watching sports. This interest has triggered intensive theorizing and empirical research on its evolutionary origins. The present research advances this line of work by testing existing and novel predictions derived from evolutionary hypotheses on the motivation to do and watch sports. Study 1 identified 36 motives for doing sports, including being entertained and to show-off abilities, and 27 motives for watching sports, including to support one’s team and to improve mood. Study 2 applied principal components analysis to classify these motives into nine broader motivation domains with regard to doing sports and into six broader motivation domains with regard to watching sports. On this basis, several predictions derived from evolutionary hypotheses were tested on each domain of motivation. In several domains, significant main and interactions effects of sex, age, partner status, and being a parent were found, which are consistent with the predictions of the evolutionary hypotheses.
AB - People exhibit a strong interest in doing and watching sports. This interest has triggered intensive theorizing and empirical research on its evolutionary origins. The present research advances this line of work by testing existing and novel predictions derived from evolutionary hypotheses on the motivation to do and watch sports. Study 1 identified 36 motives for doing sports, including being entertained and to show-off abilities, and 27 motives for watching sports, including to support one’s team and to improve mood. Study 2 applied principal components analysis to classify these motives into nine broader motivation domains with regard to doing sports and into six broader motivation domains with regard to watching sports. On this basis, several predictions derived from evolutionary hypotheses were tested on each domain of motivation. In several domains, significant main and interactions effects of sex, age, partner status, and being a parent were found, which are consistent with the predictions of the evolutionary hypotheses.
KW - Evolution of sports
KW - Motivation to do sports
KW - Motivation to watch sports
KW - Parental choice
KW - Spectator lek hypothesis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85052599395&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s40806-016-0071-7
DO - 10.1007/s40806-016-0071-7
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85052599395
SN - 2198-9885
VL - 3
SP - 20
EP - 33
JO - Evolutionary Psychological Science
JF - Evolutionary Psychological Science
IS - 1
ER -