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Testosterone, territoriality and the ‘home advantage’ in football

February 27, 2002

The `home advantage` is well known in football. The majority of teams in all divisions score more goals and win more games at home than away. Factors such as crowd support, referee bias, and familiarity with a venue, have been used to explain home advantage. New research presented today, Saturday 16 March, at The British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Blackpool reveals that biological processes may also be important.

Dr Sandy Wolfson and Dr Nick Neave from the University of Northumbria took saliva samples of the hormone testosterone from a football team playing in the Unibond Premier League. Samples were taken before a home game, an away game, and at a training session. The players` testosterone levels were found to be much higher before the home game than before the away game.

In a second study, Dr Wolfson and Dr Neave carried out the same procedure with the under-19 squad of a Premiership team. This time they took samples before the team played an extreme rival team or a moderate rival team, and found that testosterone levels were much higher when the team was about to play the extreme rival. Also, different patterns of testosterone release were related to a player`s position.

The researchers explained this by linking levels of testosterone with territoriality - when a team is about to defend their home territory, testosterone (which is linked with dominance, confidence and aggression) is raised. This is particularly the case when the threat to one`s territory is from a strong rival.

British Psychological Society (BPS)