March 18th, 2009
Why Do We Love Sports?
Sports fulfill numerous psychological functions and needs.
The love of - nay, addiction to - competitive and solitary sports cuts across all social-economic strata and throughout all the demographics. Whether as a passive consumer (spectator), a fan, or as a participant and practitioner, everyone enjoys one form of sport or another. Wherefrom this universal propensity?
Sports cater to multiple psychological and physiological deep-set needs. In this they are unique: no other activity responds as do sports to so many dimensions of one’s person, both emotional, and physical. But, on a deeper level, sports provide more than instant gratification of primal (or base, depending on one’s point of view) instincts, such as the urge to compete and to dominate.