social key question

Question 1

what is the social key question?

Answer 1

‘how can social psychology help to explain football violence and football hooliganism?’

Question 2

what is football hooliganism?

Answer 2

‘hooliganism’ is the term used broadly to describe disorderly, aggressive and often violent behaviour perpetrated by spectators at sporting events. In the UK, hooliganism is almost exclusively confined to football

Question 3

give an example that shows the negative impact of football hooliganism

Answer 3

the Heysel disaster of 1985 was when a ‘charge’ of Liverpool fans at rival Juventus supporters caused a wall to collapse, resulting in 39 deaths

Question 4

how is football hooliganism tackled?

Answer 4

• segregating opposing fans
• banning identified hooligans. there were 1929 football banning orders in force in August 2017
• the ‘kick it out’ campaign is an anti-racism group which battles racism and discrimination in English football

Question 5

what is the impact of football hooliganism on society?

Answer 5

• policing football matches in London cost the metropolitan police nearly £6.7m during the 2016/2017 season. this money could be spent on tackling other types of crime in society
• more than 1800 supporters were injured at football grounds in 2016/2017 and treating these individuals costs the NHS money
• football violence is costing the taxpayer money which could be better spent on education, care for the elderly etc.

Question 6

describe the structure of the key question

Answer 6

AO1- describe the key question
what is football hooliganism?
examples showing the negative impact of football hooliganism
how it is tackled?
what is the impact of football hooliganism on society?

AO3- apply theories from social psychology in order to explain the key question
- authoritarian personality
- social identity theory
- realistic conflict theory

Question 7

how can the authoritarian personality theory be applied to the key question?

Answer 7

• the authoritarian personality (Adorno et al 1950) is a personality type which means the individual is more likely to display prejudice and hostile attitudes against minority groups as a result of an overly strict and harsh upbringing
• so people with this personality type may be the ones who are more likely to start trouble at football matches
• they will view fans of the opposing team as inferior and displace anger they have about their harsh parents onto them

Question 8

how can the realistic conflict theory be applied to the key question?

Answer 8

• realistic conflict theory would explain violence between football fans as resulting from the competition between them. the teams will be in competition to win the match/trophy/league which will lead to inter-group conflict and hostility. this can be seen when football fans name call, chant aggressively and be physically aggressive to rival supporter’s
• this behaviour is similar to the boys in Sherif’s study of prejudice in which he created hostility between the 2 groups by putting them in competition against one another in a camp tournament
• according to RCF the way to overcome this hostility is to introduce superordinate goals which would require the different football team supporters to work together in order to achieve a common goal . e.g. a charity match to raise money for a cause they all care about

Question 9

how can the social identity theory be applied to the key question?

Answer 9

• explains football hooliganism as arising between football fans who are using social categorisation in terms of their in-group (their football team) and any other fans as the out-group.
• They will then use social comparison in order to compare their football team and its supporters to other teams so that they see themselves in a favourable light e.g. ‘Liverpool fans are the greatest fans in the world’ while displaying negative out-group bias to other football teams.
• this negative out-group bias will manifest itself in hostility e.g. name calling at football matches which could escalate into violence. They will do this because through this social identification with their football team they will enhance their personal identity and their feelings of self-esteem.
• According to this theory in order to overcome prejudice the different football supporters will need to come together and have equal status contact in order to overcome divisions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ as this theory states that the mere presence of another group is enough to cause prejudice which in this case would be violence at the football matches