Key Question Flashcards
What is the Social Psychology key question?
How can social psychology be used to reduce anti-social behaviour like football hooliganism?
Define ‘football hooliganism’.
Crowd behaviour that is negative and can cause violence between opposing sports teams
What are the 2 AO1 points in your introduction for the key question essay?
Hooliganism is a problem, which affects all societies, not just the UK - seen internationally e.g. between English fans and Russian fans during the 2016 European Championships
Rivalry between fans can be seen before and after football matches - fans wear their team’s colours and supporting badges, making themselves identifiable
Give 3 statistics about football hooliganism in the UK.
2,198 football-related arrests were done under Schedule 1 of the Football Spectators Act 1989
Most common offence types were public disorder (36%) and violent disorder (20%)
Worst offending team - Birmingham City with 57 banning orders in 2021-2022 PL season
What are the wider social and economic impacts of football hooliganism? (2 points)
Hooligans do it to achieve personal/common interests or to declare themselves as powerful -results in deaths, injuries and ruined stadiums
Vast economic implications - crowd behaviour which becomes violent or rioting cost London £3 billion in 2019 (UK Gov)
Which 3 theories link to football hooliganism?
Social Identity Theory
Realistic Conflict Theory
Social Impact Theory
How does Social Identity Theory link to football hooliganism? (4 points)
It explains football hooliganism:
Social Identification: Fans identify with their own group (in-group)
Social Comparison: Other team (out-group) is seen as worse
Supported by the Minimal Groups study - boys consistently displayed in-group favouritism, choosing to allocate more points to those in their group
However, it doesn’t account for the role of competition between the in-group and out-group e.g. opposing teams compete for a trophy
Contact alone is not enough for football hooliganism to occur
How does Realistic Conflict Theory link to football hooliganism? (5 points)
It can be used to reduce anti-social behaviour observed during football hooliganism riots
Sherif suggested that contact alone isn’t enough to reduce hostility between groups - they need to cooperate to achieve superordinate goals
Seen in Robber’s Cave study - out-group hostility between the Rattlers and Eagles was reduced when they had to work together to fix a broken down school bus and water tank
Common goal at football game could be charity which the football players, managers and fans could work together for
However, RCT fails to account for personality - Elms and Milgram’s (1966) found out that fully obedient participants scored higher on the F-Scale, indicating greater authoritative personality traits
How does football hooliganism link to the Realistic Conflict Theory? (4 points)
Could be applied to reducing it - present police officers could control crowd behaviour
Can also explain it - football fans (the target) might see a manager (the source) sharing a negative view of the opposing team and adopt it as the manager is seen as an expert
Supported by Milgram, Bickman and Berkowitz (1969) - the more confederates there were looking up to a 6th floor window, the more passers-by there were staring with them, suggesting that number of sources could affect obedience
Removing the presence of influential figures like football managers or by increasing police presence to reduce crowd behaviour could reduce anti-social behaviour during football games
What is the conclusion of your Key Question essay? (3 points)
Social psychology research could be used to implement strategies like increased police presence at football stadiums and superordinate goals between in-groups and out-groups
However, the extent to which it can reduce anti-social behaviour remains limited by dispositional factors like gender
Much of the research presented involves an androcentric sample that is not representative of anti-social behaviours observed in female football fan populations
