Football team lose yesterday? Your work performance will probably suffer today

By Alex Fradera How much do experiences in one part of our lives have effects that spill into other, seemingly separate domains? One obvious candidate is the football team you follow – it’s a distinctive arena that matters greatly for many people and involves a range of experiences, both high and low. For a new paper in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, a team led by Panagiotis Gkorezis at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki have tested whether your football team’s success can affect how you feel and perform at work. The researchers recruited 41 male officers in a Greek military unit, a convenient way to access a sample who came from across the country, and thus supported a range of teams – from bigger ones such as Olympiacos Pireaus to smaller fry like Hercules and Giannena. Every Monday afternoon, the participants gave feedback on their team’s performance on the preceding day (Sunday being the major match day in Greece). Participants stated how satisfied they were with their team’s performance and reported their experiences on the current day, Monday, such as their negative emotions, which they rated using words like irritable, upset, and jittery. Satisfaction with their team’s Sunday play was related to their negative emotions on the Monday, with poorer performance putting fans down in the dumps. Did these feelings affect work performance? The participants thought so: when they were on a downer, they rated themselves as less ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Emotion Football Occupational Sport Source Type: blogs
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