What is it about?
People pay more attention to bad things than good ones. This study shows that whole communities do the same. Using a survey of over 36,000 German football fans, who each named clubs they love and hate, I found that fanbases focus their hatred on one or a few main rivals, while their affection is spread across many clubs. Love and hate also turn out to be largely independent of each other.
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Why is it important?
Psychologists know that individuals react more strongly to negative information, but it is less clear what this means for groups. This study shows that the bias scales up: communities concentrate hostility on a few targets and spread goodwill widely. The same pattern likely shapes political polarization, brand rivalries and online outrage, where negativity piles onto single targets. Data and code are openly available.
Perspectives
Football rivalries are a wonderful natural laboratory for sociology: identities are strong, emotions run high, and fans have dozens of clubs to choose from. What struck me most was how reliably hate narrows to a single enemy while affection stays generous. I hope this article shows that something as everyday as football fandom can reveal how groups organise conflict and how individual biases add up to collective patterns.
Thomas Grund
RWTH Aachen University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Negative emotions concentrate while positive emotions diffuse in football fan rivalries, PLOS One, September 2026, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0356757.
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