Why do we like watching the Olympics so much?

By Jim Davies, Professor, Institute of Cognitive Science, Carleton University

Interest in sports is so common that we don’t always stop to wonder why. Unlike food and sex, there is no obvious survival or reproductive value to sports spectatorship and fandom.

If we weren’t in a pandemic, people would have undoubtedly travelled across the world to watch the Olympics in China. Even people who don’t usually watch sports tune in the Olympic Games.

Why, then, is it so fun to watch the Olympics? What do people get out of the energy, time and money they invest in watching other people play sports?

We love to play

Humans, like all mammals,…

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