What makes millions of Americans play fantasy football every year, when the odds of winning are so low? Well, scientists are now saying that it's the concept of variable reinforcement that makes us persevere with fantasy football. That's the same psychological process that motivates a lab rat to keep pressing a button in the hope of eliciting a titbit!
Variable reinforcement is where a protagonist hopes that performing an action will exact a reward, but they don't know how many times they will have to perform the action to get their desired result. Moving from lab rats to humans, probably the easiest comparison is with casino slot machine players, who sit blank-faced feeding their machine with coins in the hope of hitting the jackpot.
An interesting feature of variable reinforcement is that it can motivate the protagonist to perform an action more frequently than in the case of fixed ratio reinforcement. For example, if a lab rat doesn't know how many times it will have to press a button to get a food pellet, it will typically press the button many more times than if it knows that a pellet will be released after every four hits on the button (fixed ratio reinforcement).
In his article "The psychology of fantasy football," Ryan Sager suggests that this same concept is at the heart of the enduring popularity of fantasy football. The idea is that it's exactly because it's so hard to top a fantasy football league that provokes players to spend hours mulling over their picks and strategies. They hope that the more active they are in managing their team, the greater the chance that they will eventually rise to the top but have no way of knowing whether this perpetual tinkering with their team will bring positive or negative results.
Of course, though, this supposes that the goal of all fantasy football participants is to win the offered prizes. Human psychology is more complex than that and there are other forces that come into play. For many participants, for example, it's simply about continuing to live the dream, albeit vicariously, after their own playing dreams have been dashed. This could be labeled the "glory days" theory.
"Glory days, well, they'll pass you by / Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye."
Bruce Springsteen commented on this tendency to live in the past in his song "Glory Days." OK, so the Boss was singing about an ex high school baseball player, but the same principle holds true and his lyrics are a poignant reminder that not all our dreams last or come true.
Why fantasy football, though? Why don't people turn to other avenues when they realize their childhood dream isn't going to come true? Well, some do. Some end up coaching junior football or throw their energies into family and career. However, football generates a passion that tends to last. It gets under your skin and into your blood. Fantasy football offers an opportunity to showcase your knowledge and to demonstrate that you're better than your peers at judging the best players. In fact, forget your peers; you're showing that if you were given the chance, you'd do a whole lot better than most of the highly paid coaches that prowl the touchlines!
Further reading/viewing:
* Bruce Springsteen - 'Glory days':
* The psychology of fantasy football: http://trueslant.com/ryansager/2009/08/24/the-psychology-of-fantasy-football/
* Why we play fantasy football: http://manzine.org/2009/08/21/why-we-play-fantasy-football/
* Fantasy Football: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_football_(American)#History
* USA Today fantasy football: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/fantasy/default.htm
* Vicarious living through football: http://www.sectalk.com/boards/sec-football-talk/73515-living-vicariously-through-team-you-support.html
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