Puma investigates love and football in new experiment in Britain via Droga5 New York
Puma has decided to resolve one of the great mysteries of the human heart in a new interactive campaign called ‘The White Paper’ via majority Aussie-owned agency, Droga 5 New York.
If the two greatest passions among British men are women and football, which one is their first love?
Together with professor Bruce Hood, MPhil, PhD, and professor Marcus Munafo, MSc, PhD, experts in the fields of developmental and biological psychology at the University of Bristol’s School of Experimental Psychology, PUMA conducted an academic study to get the definitive answer.
Renowned for their passionate support of their team, a group Newcastle United FC fans were chosen to participate in a series of tests designed to gauge fans’ emotive reactions. The scientists specifically used implicit methodology to uncover fans ‘true’ feelings, allowing them to find out exactly what participants were thinking, even when their actions may have suggested otherwise.
Even though football widows the world over have long suspected they are the runners up in winning their partners’ affections, the new research demonstrated some intriguing findings. In fact, fans’ affection for their partner is five times stronger than for their team.
The participants in the study were chosen as a sample group on the basis that each had been in their current romantic relationship for at least five years, and had been a Newcastle United season ticket holder for at least five years.
The participants were an average age of 46, and the average relationship was 21 years. 71% of the participants were married to their partners.
The participants provided a high resolution photo of their partner before the experiment began, which was added by the researchers to three other images: their beloved Newcastle United team, an unknown woman and an unfamiliar rugby team.
On the day of the test, the participants were given a pair of scissors and instructed to open envelopes containing these photos and cut them up while hooked up to a Galvanic Skin Response machine, which records electrodermal activity (EDA) signal, testing their unconscious reaction to cutting up the pictures.
During the study, several participants refused to cut the team photo, but were fine with cutting the photo of the wife.
In post-study interviews, a number of subjects said that they’d been convinced that their affection for their team was stronger, and were surprised by the result.