Group emotion in spectator sport: An interdisciplinary approach to affective qualia
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abstract
Spectator sport entails unique individual and collective cultural practices, often bound to the production and negotiation of emotion. For instance, the neurophysiological mechanism of mirror neurons-activated in imitation and empathy-evidences the social functionality of collective emotions. Accordingly, in congruence with the token identity theory, we shed light on the group emotion theory by reinforcing and clarifying the psychological and sociological aspects of group emotion. We discuss the ways in which emotion is manifest-as a neurophysiological state. Next, we describe the social significance of group emotion with regard to embracing cognitive-affective system and sociability function. We then discuss the relationship between bodies, sport spaces, and the production of spectator sport-specific group emotion along the five elements influential to group emotion: (1) identicalness of the stimulus object, (2) uniformity of the functional organization of the neurophysiological state, (3) readiness of emotion in the cognitive-affective system, (4) physical and psychological connection, and (5) structural and cultural contexts. We conclude by identifying phenomenological properties of group emotion and provide a discussion describing implications based on the findings of qualitative inquiry and empirical assessments.