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How watching sports shapes zero-sum thinking: Correlational, experimental, and longitudinal evidence.

Jinseok S. Chun et al.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology2026https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000520article
AJG 4ABDC A*
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

The popularity of professional sports has increased exponentially in recent decades. Although prior social psychological research has emphasized how sports foster group identification and social bonding, we show that consuming sports-related content has an unintended cognitive consequence: strengthening zero-sum beliefs. Specifically, watching and following sports increases the belief that success inherently requires others to lose. Across two correlational studies (Studies 1 and 2, Ns = 788, 1,994), two experiments (Studies 3 and 4, Ns = 1,164, 585), and one longitudinal study (Study 5, N = 830) conducted in the United States and India, we find that watching and following sports is both correlationally and causally associated with zero-sum thinking. These effects extend beyond sports contexts to shape attitudes toward immigrants and a distributive (win-lose) orientation in negotiation. Together, our findings reveal how sports engagement can systematically influence social cognition and broader worldviews. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000520

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@article{jinseok2026,
  title        = {{How watching sports shapes zero-sum thinking: Correlational, experimental, and longitudinal evidence.}},
  author       = {Jinseok S. Chun et al.},
  journal      = {Journal of Personality and Social Psychology},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000520},
}

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How watching sports shapes zero-sum thinking: Correlational, experimental, and longitudinal evidence.

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.