Many people feel devastated after their favorite team loses. Sometimes they have trouble sleeping. (Yes, I speak from personal experience.) That raises some legitimate questions: Why suffer? Is it even rational to be a sports fan?
Recent research suggests that it might not be. On average, soccer, the most popular sport on the planet, makes people a lot less happy. The lesson is that if you're strongly attached to your local team, you might be better off if you decide to disengage — starting right now.
Peter Dolton and George MacKerron of the University of Sussex linked several large data sets. To measure people's happiness, they used millions of reports from tens of thousands of people, mostly in the United Kingdom, who recorded their levels of happiness at various times in the day, and who also reported on what they were doing during those times.