Male Emotionality in NCAA Championship Basketball: 30 Years of One Shining Moment

• In Event: 3481 - Section on Social Psychology Refereed Roundtables (cosponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 05. Emotions and Social Inequality

Abstract

The NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship dates back to 1939 (ncaa.com). In 1987, the coverage of the tournament included, for the first time, a montage video of tournament highlights set to the song “One Shining Moment”. These videos represent a celebration of the tournament and thus highlight important moments. In the more than 30 years of these video montages, there has been an evolution in the presentation of men’s emotions. While the videos celebrate male athleticism, there have also been changes in which emotional expressions are highlighted in each year’s videos. This research will use content analysis to examine the emotional expressions included in these videos over the 31 year period. Conclusions will be drawn from the overall corpus of videos and comparisons will be made between years of the videos. A very preliminary review of the videos indicates a difference in the types of emotional displays included over the years. In more recent years of the videos, young men are more likely to be shown with sad, tearful faces than was apparent in earlier versions of the videos. Further analysis will look at the range of emotional displays presented in the videos to examine differences over time both with negative emotions and with positive emotions.

Authors

• Gretchen Peterson, University of Memphis

• J. Dylan Sandifer, University of Memphis