Emotalizer: World Cup Emotions

“The British public still feeling the pain of England’s World Cup performance, and haven’t forgiven Suarez just yet”

Following England’s exit from FIFA World Cup 2014, we examined how the British public were feeling about England’s exit at the group stages and how that compared to their feelings about the performance of other countries – Spain’s exit, Greece’s progression past the groups stages and Uruguay’s progression. They rated these so that we can compare them to the other known emotions on the affective circumplex, a general framework that can be used to characterise any core emotion on two aspects: activation (how strong it is) and pleasure (how positive it is).

Negative activation for all four events showed a low average engagement in the World Cup in the general population. Our respondents cared least about Greece progressing, and understandably cared most about England’s exit. Even with this relatively low engagement, respondents were, on average, below neutral on pleasure for all four events. The most unpleasant ratings were England’s exit and Uruguay’s progression. Looks like even those who are not fans of the beautiful game felt the pain of Suarez’s strikes.