Family violence and football: the effect of unexpected emotional cues on violent behavior

Abstract

We study the link between family violence and the emotional cues associated with wins and losses by professional football teams. We hypothesize that the risk of violence is affected by the “gain-loss” utility of game outcomes around a rationally expected reference point. Our empirical analysis uses police reports of violent incidents on Sundays during the professional football season. Controlling for the pregame point spread and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses (defeats when the home team was predicted to win by four or more points) lead to a 10% increase in the rate of at-home violence by men against their wives and girlfriends. In contrast, losses when the game was expected to be close have small and insignificant effects. Upset wins (victories when the home team was predicted to lose) also have little impact on violence, consistent with asymmetry in the gain-loss utility function. The rise in violence after an upset loss is concentrated in a narrow time window near the end of the game and is larger for more important games. We find no evidence for reference point updating based on the halftime score.

Figure I

Risk of Violence Following Loss or Win

Figure II

Final Score Differential versus the pre−Game Point Spread Notes: Realized score differential is opponent’s minus local team’s final score. The plotted regression line has an intercept of −.17 (s.e.=.21) and a slope of 1.01 (s.e.=.03).

Figure III

Probability of Victory as a Function of the Spread Note: Curve is fit from a regression of the probability of victory for the local team on a third order polynomial in the spread.

Figure IV

Television Audience for Local Games and the Spread Note: Each rating point equals 1% of the total number of television households in the local market. The plotted regression line controls for team fixed effects and has an intercept of 24.89 (s.e.=.20) and a slope of −.12 (s.e.=.03).

Figure V

Differential Increase in Violence for a Loss versus a Win, as a Function of the Spread, For Highly Salient Games Notes: Dashed lines are pointwise 95% confidence intervals. Highly salient games include games in which the local team is still in playoff contention and also is playing against a traditional rival or has an unusually large number of sacks, turnovers, or penalties (see Table 6).