Why does the World Cup move us so much? Psychologist explains

We're at the newsstand: a grandfather's hands touch his grandson's small hands as he exchanges a chrome figurine, where affection is present...

Now we enter the room where everyone is gathered. The smell of popcorn in the air hides the grave silence seconds before a penalty. This and much more, it's the World Cup. Far beyond field tactics, the event is consolidated as a powerful psychosocial anchor.

In an era marked by acceleration and digital distancing, the World Cup operates as a collective ritual capable of reorganizing our emotions, uniting the invisible of affection with the biology of our brain.

The Transitional Object and the Chemistry of the Bond
The phenomenon begins long before the opening whistle, materialized in sticker albums. From Winnicott's psychoanalytic perspective, the album and its stickers function as transitional objects. They operate as tangible bridges between the individual's internal world (their desires, fantasies and projections) and the shared external reality.

In-person exchange imposes perspective, negotiation and detachment, subverting generational barriers into a common code. Neuropsychologically, this dynamic is supported by the mesolimbic reward system: the search for the rare sticker triggers dopamine with each package opened. When there is this face-to-face contact, there is a concomitant release of oxytocin, the bonding hormone, transforming collecting into a powerful social cement that rescues spontaneous interaction.

The fusion of Egos and Neural Synchrony
When looking at the screen, watching games in groups, sharing emotions of anguish, joy, frustration, etc., this promotes a temporary dilution of everyday loneliness. Freud, in his analysis of mass psychology, points out that the sharing of a common ideal allows a benign regression of the Ego, that is, the rigid boundaries of individual identity are softened, allowing the subject to merge into a larger community; existential anguish is alleviated by the collective catharsis of the goal.

Physically, this fusion is made possible by mirror neurons. When we witness the triumph or fall of the athlete or the frustration of the fan next door, our brain internally simulates the same experience. The result is collective neural synchrony: the group's heartbeats and alert states align, promoting mutual validation and reducing cortisol levels, which acts as a direct antidote to contemporary social isolation.

Time Markers: Nostalgia and Consolidation of Memory
The indelible fixation of where we were, who we watched certain games with, what smells we smell, reveals the World Cup as a psychic time marker.

For psychoanalysis, the nostalgia awakened by the event is not something passive, but a refuge of psychic security, a reunion with childhood and the first objects of love, sharing and belonging.

This subjective permanence finds support in the neuropsychology of memory:

Emotionally charged events acutely activate the amygdala, which acts as an amplifier for the hippocampus.

In the face of the collective outcry, the brain interprets the moment as vital for survival, recording the context with precision, immortalizing the moment in the subject's biography.

The Sacred Pause in the Hyperaccelerated World
Finally, the World Cup imposes a suspension of utilitarian and productive time, establishing what anthropology and psychoanalysis understand as time for ritual and celebration. It is a temporary truce in the punitive demands of the social superego: there, crying, shouting, swearing and stopping routine are legitimized.

By shifting the focus away from stressful tasks and individual screens to an in-person macro event, we allow the brain to rest and reorganize.

Sociologist Gustave Le Bon pointed out that the mass has a transitory collective soul. In it, collective feelings are extremely contagious and spread by suggestion. If the energy in the room is one of anxiety before the penalty, this anxiety is not just added, it is multiplied throughout the group.

Being part of this mass generates a deep feeling of omnipotence and security. Isolation generates unconscious helplessness. By sharing the support, the individual feels that they are part of a giant, invincible body.

Existential loneliness disappears, as you are "influenced" by the presence and echo of the other.

In short, the World Cup survives as one of the rare oases of contemporary times, in which biology and psyche align to remind us that, fundamentally, we are beings of connection, presence and affection, and that we can have a respite, dissolving the weight of the "I", resting in the current of a common affection...

*Text written by psychologist Marcia Lenci Viscomi (CRP: 06/17014)

Are you going to travel to the World Cup? See which vaccines you should take

Source: CNN