Spectatorship and Crowd Behavior

Abstract

One of the more intriguing actors present at a sports event is the spectator. The spectators’ role in aiding or hindering athletic performance has been highlighted in earlier discussions of social impact theory, the home field advantage, and social facilitation (chap. 2). However, if we redirect our focus away from the influence that spectators have on athletes to consider instead the behavior of spectators themselves, we find that the available evidence on most questions is fairly limited. Even within the broader context of collective behavior, the dynamics underlying the various behaviors of crowds are only partially understood despite a great amount of speculative theorizing over the better part of a century (see, e.g., Lang & Lang, 1961; Milgram & Toch, 1969; R.H. Turner & Killian, 1972; K. Young, 1946). Of course, evidence relating to the behavior of the subset of sports crowds is even more sparse.