Taiwan wins the WBSC Premier 12 baseball tournament! Japanese study says: Watching baseball games can lead to higher "happiness" than less popular sports
WBSC Premier 12 has just ended. Taiwan defeated Japan 4:0 to win the championship. This is also the first time Taiwan has won the championship in a major international baseball competition. Many Taiwanese people went to the Tokyo Dome in person to support the event. In fact, research published in Frontiers in Public Health pointed out that physically participating in sports events can improve physical and mental health compared to those who do not pay attention to the events at all.
The “four happiness indicators” of attending sports events in person have increased significantly.
The research was sponsored by Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. The research team obtained data from 7,209 subjects through the “National Household Face-to-Face Survey on Culture, Leisure and Sport in the UK”, of which 2,397 (33.3%) had participated in live sports activities in the past 12 months. By removing variables such as gender, poverty level, age, health status or employment status, the research team found that among those who watch sports events on site, 4 indicators have obvious changing trends:
Life satisfaction: Compared with those who did not participate in the live event, the score of this item increased by 0.171 points.
Sense of purpose in life: Compared with those who did not participate in the live event, the score of this item increased by 0.230 points.
Loneliness: Compared with those who did not participate in the live event, the score of this item dropped by 0.083 points.
Sense of social connection: Participating in sports activities can provide regular opportunities for social interaction, thus enhancing the sense of group identity and belonging.
Although watching live events had a smaller impact on each of these indicators, the findings still have clinical implications because even small differences in subjective well-being can have a significant impact on health outcomes. Study author Helen Keyes points out that the benefits of live physical activity may stem from its sociability: participation in physical activity can provide regular opportunities for social interaction, which in turn enhances subjective well-being and reduces loneliness.
However, the study also found that participating in sporting events did not predict changes in anxiety or well-being. This may be because happiness is “regressive”. “Changes in happiness are short-lived and happiness levels quickly return to the average. Since the study measured participation in live physical activities in the past 12 months, happiness Any impact on sentiment is likely to be short-lived and not evident in the data,” Keyes said.
Is following “sports events” as healthy as exercising? Related to increased gray matter area in the brain
In addition to the British study, a paper published by Waseda University in Japan in the “Sport Management Review” also stated that people who regularly watch sports events not only have an improved subjective well-being, but also show a tendency to be more active in specific areas of the brain. In the first study, the team collected 20,000 Japanese people who had previously watched sports events. After analyzing the data, they showed that the behavior of watching games is indeed related to an increase in subjective well-being.
In the second study, the research team further recruited 208 volunteers online and asked them to watch various types of sports events to assess their mental health before and after watching. Research results show that compared with less popular sports such as golf, watching widely accepted sports such as baseball and football has a more significant impact on improving happiness.
In the last study, the team used neuroimaging technologies such as magnetic resonance scanning (MRI) to detect changes in brain activity in 14 subjects after watching sports events. The analysis showed that watching sports events stimulates reward circuits in the brain and further leads to feelings of happiness or pleasure. In addition, image analysis showed that those who frequently watch games show larger gray matter volumes in areas related to reward circuits; this indicates that frequent watching of games may indeed be related to changes in brain structure.
Watching games is more than just a form of entertainment! Expert: Has made practical contributions to public welfare
Study author Shintaro Sato believes that the results of this study show that watching sports events has the potential to have a positive and positive effect on the public’s psychological and neurophysiological health; it is not limited to subjective feelings, but actually affects brain activity. “Watching sports events has a positive impact on the public’s psychological and neurophysiological health.” It is not only an entertainment activity, but may also make a practical contribution to improving public happiness!"
Dr. Shintaro also emphasized that over time, by causing structural changes in the brain’s reward system, it is expected to bring long-term benefits to the individual. Especially for people who want to improve their overall health, it’s not just actual exercise that’s good for the body; regularly watching sporting events, especially popular ones like baseball or football, can also have certain physical and mental health benefits.
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