By definition, the hooligans (ultras, barrabravas, etc.) are people who show aggressive behavior at football events. During the last decades, social psychologists and sociologists have paid attention to this phenomenon that had its peak in the 80s in Europe, but which today remains at the center of controversy due to frequent altercations, such as those that occurred just a few weeks ago among radical fans of the Deportivo de la Coruña and of Atlético de Madrid
On this occasion, a person lost his life after being thrown into the river after a massive fight. These violent encounters between groups of hooligans have led to numerous deaths and tragedies throughout the history of football. One of the most famous occurred in 1985 in the stadium of Heysel (Brussels) where 39 people died while the European Cup final was being played between Liverpool and the Juventus Since 2004, the level of violence carried out by these groups seems to have decreased somewhat, but it has not completely disappeared.
Hooligans: group psychology and violence by consensus
The police units specialized in these issues and the collaboration between security forces at the international level have made it difficult to organize these violent groups. However, street clashes after matches are still frequent.
Fan violence has also affected other sports, but “hooliganism” has traditionally been associated with football since it is the sport with the most followers in the world. Angel Gomez professor of Psychology at UNED, states that “In Spain, between 1975 and 1985, there were 6,011 violent acts related to sports, 90% of which were directly related to football”.
The term “hooligan” was born in England in the 60s and seems to come from an 1899 song inspired by Patrick O’Hoolinhan, an Irish bouncer (security) and thief who lived in London. He and his family were famous for their frequent fights. According to reports from the London Metropolitan Police, O’Hoolinhan was the leader of a youth gang. The young men who belonged to his band were baptized as “hooleys ” (in Irish it means wild).
After its beginnings in England, the rise of hooliganism It occurred in the 1980s due to the public notoriety that hooligans achieved in different European countries, in addition to their high color in the animation of sporting events and the violence they generated inside and outside the stadiums. Depending on the group and country of residence, there appear to be certain differences between these groups. For example, in Spain and Italy they usually share the club’s colors with the political ideology (fascism or left-wing radicalism). However, in England, many groups are apolitical.
It should be noted that the political ideology is only in the display of symbols, since these groups do not seek social change, it is a symbolic ideology that is part of their recreational component. Another example of the differences between these groups of radicals are the “Zulus”. The “hooligan firm” associated with the team Birmingham City, is one of the most heterogeneous groups of English ultras. Many different ethnicities coexist among its members, something that is not common among hooligans.
These groups offer their members the possibility of accessing a role : that of ultras or hooligans. The young hooligan finds in the group an identity already predisposed with a set of norms, values, sensations, beliefs, reasons and models of action. Through a process of “culturalization” and role assimilation, the member of a group makes the images and rules of conduct his own through which he can be confirmed by others and approved by the group.
It may seem that their actions are a spontaneous manifestation of exaltation of the team’s colors but they are, in reality, the result of meticulous organization and many hours of work. Ultra groups are organizations. As such they are financed in different ways (sale of merchandisingmagazines, etc.) and require organizational work that the leader and the ultras with responsibilities carry out during the week.
The violence of hooligans and its recreational component
One of the characteristics of hooligan behavior that has attracted the most attention of sociologists and social psychologists is the playful violence that these groups use. The truth is that football becomes a set of rituals, chants, symbols and expressions that define the radical fan. In the stadium, emotionality moves away from rationality, football is a complex ritual that includes two parallel worlds: one on the field and another in the stands. When fans gather to go to the stadium, they do so en masse. Then a series of intragroup and intergroup processes begin.
The actors produce behaviors about their identity or passion for the team, conflicts occur with the hooligans of the rival team, they seek self-reaffirmation (that of the group) and build a self-image that is recognizable by the “others.” who are denigrated. Fans perceive bad intention in every action of their opponents (or rival fans), even when it does not exist. They react with hatred and anger because they consider themselves innocent victims of the unjust referee or the intimidating police.
Violence, identity and group reinforcement
This violence is aimed at maintaining the internal cohesion of the group itself either Hooligans function as closed social systems and have to displace aggressiveness towards other social groups. The mechanisms involved in this type of tribal violence have been analyzed by the Social Identity Theory by Tajfel and Turner It is a violence that is born from the group and whose purpose is group reinforcement. The presence of another group is the trigger of a self-regulation mechanism that tries to reduce internal differences by reinforcing the internal norm of uniformity. This is apparently gratuitous violence, which has no other objective than to humiliate the opponent to proclaim the superiority of one’s own group.
Marsh, Rosser and Harré in “The rules of Disorder” (1978) call this phenomenon “ritualized aggression.” For these authors, confrontations between fans, apparently disorderly, are actually ordered confrontations and not exclusively real violence. María Teresa Adán Revilla, researcher at the University of Salamanca and expert on violence in football, states:
“Two rival groups of fans exchange insults until, from each side, an individual comes forward, facing each other in the open space between the two sides. There, new insults are exchanged and threatening gestures are made, until one of them loses ground and retreats. The result of a successful ‘fight’ is the retreat of the enemy and the increase in reputation of the protagonist of the side that has forced the other to back down.”.
Ritualized aggression is symbolic because it involves the deployment of weapons, but not their use. It is about humiliating and securing the submission of your opponents, but not physically harming them. However, the ritual can be interrupted to give way to real violence. This happens when a member of one of the groups accidentally violates the unspoken rules of the ritual or when an external factor, such as the police, intervenes.
Most of the “aggressions” carried out by hooligans, therefore, do not have an ideological origin, but rather a recreational one. Its purpose is to create an atmosphere of fun and celebration, break the monotony of life and access intense emotions.
Hooliganism and hooligans
A hooligan is a person who has loud fun, causes disturbances or scandals in public places and, in general, acts with inconsideration towards others. What characterizes the hooligan and, therefore, differentiates him from the typical criminal who acts for utilitarian motives, is the use of violence for recreational purposes. Elias and Dunning, in their article “Sport and leisure in the process of civilization ” (1992) believe that hooligan behavior is best understood as a search for excitement in an unexciting society. The social repression of emotions would constitute an essential part of the civilization process.
Playful emotion has increased its importance in recent decades as a compensation for the rigid social control of emotional expressions. Emotional manifestations are allowed in sports, shows, parties and, in general, in leisure time events. A society has been created that has imposed emotional restraint and that, in the words of Elias and Dunning, “Communities have been built capable of satisfying all material needs, stable and safe. Communities where daily work is usually repetitive and where everything tries to be planned, so that the stimulating appearance of the new and surprising is unlikely.”
The sociologist Pilz points out that this is a context conducive to the emergence of compensatory phenomena such as the love of risky sports the exciting nature of much of current film production (thrillers, films of violence, sex and disasters), the sensationalist bias of the media, the success of gossip magazines or the rise of morbid reality television shows.
The psychologist John Kerr attempts to explain the hooligan phenomenon through Apter’s Investment Theory(1982, 1989) who focuses his interest on the phenomenological analysis of human motivations and emotions. This theory focuses on three concepts: metamotivational states, hedonic tone, and protective frames.
Hooligan motivations
The statesmetamotivational They are those basic mental states of a transitory nature that underlie a specific motivation. There are four pairs of metamotivational states, telic/paratelic, negativism/conformity, dominance/comprehension, autolic/alloic, that coexist separately within a bistable system, such as the switching from on to off in an appliance, on and off. .
In the telic state, we tend to act in a serious and planned way, while in the paratelic state, which is more common in the hooligan, we tend to behave spontaneously and playfully, being oriented towards the present. Another metamotivational state that predominates in the hooligan is negativism, which is defined as resistance or rebellion against established norms. At a given moment, the influence of various factors, such as the incidence of an unexpected event, can induce us to make an investment, and move from one state to another.
The concept of hedonic tone refers to the degree to which a person feels that they are aroused at a given moment. The higher or lower level of arousal that a person experiences can arouse very different emotions depending on the metamotivational state in which they are. In the paratelic state, high arousal produces arousal that leads to pleasurable feelings (i.e., high hedonic tone) while low arousal generates boredom and unpleasant feelings (low hedonic tone). In the telic state, emotional reactions change: high arousal causes anxiety and displeasure, low arousal produces relaxation and pleasant feelings.
In studies that use the Telic Dominance Scale, such as that of Murgatroyd (1978), which measures the metamotivational state that predominates in an individual, it has been proven that people with paratelic dominance are more likely to participate in risky situations. According to Kerr, there is empirical evidence that associates the behavior of the criminal and the hooligan with a paratelic orientation.
Finally, the concept of a protective framework refers to the fact that negative emotions (anxiety, anger or fear) can be interpreted positively and experienced as pleasurable if they occur in the paratelic state. This seems to explain why some people enjoy a horror movie while sitting in a seat in which they feel safe or are able to jump because they are well equipped.
