Vol.3, No.3, 255-258 (2011) Natural Science
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ns.2011.33032
Copyright © 2011 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS
Happiness and heart rate response: a case of fan
services at japanese professional baseball games
Kohzoh Yoshino*, Sayaka Matsumoto, Eiichi Someya, Muneo Kitajima
Center for Service Research, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Midorigaoka, Ikeda, Osaka,
Japan; *Corresponding Author: yoshino-k@aist.go.jp
Received 19 November 2010; revised 22 December 2010; accepted 25 December 2010.
ABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to develop a method
for predicting the psychological states of spec-
tators watching professional baseball games at
a stadium. This method includes a real time
measurement of instantaneous heart rate (i.e.,
the inverse of the RR interval) without prevent-
ing the subject from watching the game and a
mathematical procedure used to predict mo-
ment by moment psychological states by cor-
relating the degree of a psychological state with
the strength of heart rate response, defined as
the mean deviation of heart rate variability from
a linear regression line from 5 sec before to 25
sec after an event during a baseball game. We
recorded the instantaneous heart rates of 10
subjects (total of 27 cases) while they watched
Japanese professional baseball games at a sta-
dium and had them subjectively rate the degree
of their psychological states in an after-event
interview. We identified three psychological
states (happiness, excitement, and vigor) whose
strength can be predicted from the strength of
heart rate response. Analysis of the measured
data clarified that heart rate response had a sig-
nificant correlation with the subjective rating of
the intensity of happiness (r = 0.56, p < 0.0001),
vigor (r = 0.55, p < 0.0001), and excitement (r =
0.49, p < 0.0001).
Keywords: Sports Entertainment; Physiological
Signal; Heart Rate; Happiness; Excitation
1. INTRODUCTION
One of the most important goals of sports entertain-
ment services, such as professional baseball game ser-
vices, is to enhance the happiness of spectators at the
stadium. To this end, it is important to measure how the
spectator psychologically responds to each event at the
stadium, and to develop a method to use the data to
achieve this goal. Human psychological states can be
measured in two ways. One is on-site measurement, in
which the spectators report their psychological states by
filling out questionnaires or by verbally describing them.
The other is after-event interviews in which they are
asked to remember their psychological state during the
event in baseball game [1,2]. Since these methods are
easy to carry out, they have been used widely. However,
each method has a problem. One is that the on-site
measurement is likely to interfere with spectators’ watch-
ing of games. The other is that the after-event measure-
ment may not be reliable due to interviewees’ failure to
remember or to their psychological biases [3,4]. In this
paper, the use of an on-site physiological measurement
that does not interfere with spectators’ watching of
games and a method to relate the physiological data with
spectators’ psychological states is proposed.
Physiological signals such as heart rate reflect the
autonomic nervous system’s activity [5]. The autonomic
nervous system is strongly affected by such psychologi-
cal states as excitement. Thus, it may be possible to use
heart rate (physiological signals) to evaluate psycho-
logical states [6-9]. The use of physiological signals has
two advantages over the conventional method. The first
is a relatively unobtrusive and automatic measurement
of psychological states in real time without interfering
with the spectators’ watching of games, and the second
is a continuous measurement of their variability.
To our knowledge, no study thus far has clarified the
correlation between the physiological response and the
psychological state of a spectator watching a profes-
sional game at a stadium. We hypothesize that heart rate
increases when a spectator becomes happy and excited
by such events as the favored team’s scoring and ap-
pealing fan service events while it decreases when a
spectator becomes depressed by events such as the op-
posing team’s scoring and boring fan service events. For
this study, we recorded the instantaneous heart rates of
K. Yoshino et al. / Natural Science 3 (2011) 255-258
Copyright © 2011 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS
256
subjects while they watched a Japanese professional
baseball game at a stadium. We analyzed how their heart
rate responses to events during games correlated with
their subjective psychological states.
2. METHODS
Ten subjects (five females and five males between the
ages of 21 and 53 years) participated in the on-site
physiological data collection sessions, after providing
their informed written consent approved by the ethical
committee at AIST. All subjects were fans of the Hok-
kaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, a Japanese professional
baseball team, and had been to the Sapporo Dome to
watch Fighters’ games 28 to 250 times.
Subjects watched Fighters’ games at the Sapporo
Dome. We collected physiological data while they
watched the games. Eight subjects watched three games
(one in July, one in August, and one in September of
2008); one subject watched one game in September of
2008; and one watched two games in July and August of
2008. We collected a total of 27 cases. All subjects were
seated in the infield zone. We recorded their RR-inter-
vals with a wearable electrocardiogram device (Active-
Tracer, AC-301, GMS, Japan), from about 5 min before
the start of the game until 10 min after the end of the
game. Typically, the length of a baseball game is 180 min.
We also recorded video images of each subject’s be-
havior. Subjects watched their video images on a sepa-
rate day and recalled their subjective psychological
states at specific events as they watched the games. The
specific events were the Fighters’ and opponents’ scoring
and four fan service events. The four fan service events
were two types of dancing exhibitions, the Fighters’
cheering song, and a show by the Fighters’ mascot. The
subjects registered the intensity of their psychological
states on a 100 mm-long visual analogue scale (VAS)
questionnaire, for which the end points were labeled
“lowest” and “highest”. The questionnaire quantified the
intensity of eight psychological states: happiness, ten-
sion, fatigue, boredom, depression, anger, vigor, and
excitement. Tension, fatigue, depression, anger, and vigor
are scales on the well-known Profile of Mood States
(POMS) questionnaire [10]. In addition to these scales,
we adopted the scales happiness, boredom, and excite-
ment since these intensities vary greatly in an entertain-
ment environment. To reduce inter-individual variability,
we normalized the measured values of psychological
state intensity by transforming the data to a z-score for
each subject.
Figure 1 presents an example of the time course of a
subject’s heart rate from the beginning to the end of a
game. Clearly, heart rate increased when the Fighters
scored.
Figure 1. Example of the time course of a subject’s heart rate
from the beginning to the end of a game. Heart rate increased
when the Fighters scored.
We fitted a linear regression line to the time course of
heart rate measured from the beginning to the end of a
game and then calculated the heart rate response to spe-
cific events. The heart rate response was defined as the
mean deviation of heart rate variability from a linear
regression line from 5 sec before to 25 sec after an event
during a game. The heart rate responses to Fighters’ and
opponents’ scoring and to four fan service events (two
types of dancing exhibitions, the Fighters’ cheering song
and a show by the Fighters’ mascot) were calculated.
The correlation coefficients of the heart rate responses to
the specific events and z-scored psychological state
scores were calculated. The grand mean value of heart
rate response to scoring events in July of 2008 was then
compared with those in August and September of 2008.
We also analyzed how fan career, measured by the total
number of past visits to Sapporo Dome to watch Fight-
ers’ games affected the subject’s heart rate responses to
scoring events.
3. RESULTS
Table 1 summarizes the correlation coefficients be-
tween heart rate responses to scoring and fan service
events and z-scored subjective psychological state inten-
sities. Figure 2 shows the scatter plots from comparing
heart rate response to scoring and fan service events with
the corresponding subjectively evaluated normalized
intensity of happiness. Heart rate responses indicated
significant positive correlations with the subjective
evaluation of happiness (r = 0.56, p < 0.0001) (Figure 2).
Moreover, it indicated significant positive correlations
with vigor (r = 0.55, p < 0.0001) and excitement (r =
0.49, p < 0.0001).
The grand mean heart rate response to Fighters’ scor-
ing in July of 2008 (12.95 bpm) was twice as high as
K. Yoshino et al. / Natural Science 3 (2011) 255-258
Copyright © 2011 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS
257257
Figure 2. Scatter plots comparing heart rate (HR) response to
scoring and fan service events with the corresponding subjec-
tively evaluated intensity of happiness (z-scored) (r = 0.56, p <
0.0001).
Table 1. Correlation coefficient between heart rate (HR) re-
sponses to scoring and fan service events and the correspond-
ing subjectively evaluated intensity of psychological states
(z-scored). *: p < 0.0001.
Correlation coefficient
Happiness 0.56*
Tension 0.07
Fatigue –0.23
Boredom –0.29*
Depression –0.43*
Anger –0.33*
Vigor 0.55*
Excitement 0.49*
those in August (4.92 bpm) and September of 2008 (6.29
bpm). The heart rate increase response when the Fighters
scored was likely to decrease as the total number of past
visits to Sapporo Dome to watch Fighters’ games in-
creased (Table 2).
4. DISCUSSION
This study aimed to develop a new method that uses a
physiological signal (heart rate) to assess the psycho-
logical state of a spectator watching a professional
baseball game in a stadium. Analysis of the measured
data clarified that heart rate response had a significant
correlation with the subjectively rated intensity of hap-
piness, vigor, and excitement (Table 1 and Figure 2).
This result suggests that it may be possible to predict
automatically a spectator’s happiness, vigor, and excite-
ment in response to each event at a stadium automati-
cally and in real time by simply measuring instantaneous
heart rate. The grand mean heart rate response to Fight-
ers’ scoring in July of 2008 (12.95 bpm) was twice as
high as those in August (4.92 bpm) and September of
2008 (6.29 bpm). Fighters were in contention for the
league championship in July of 2008 but fell behind the
competition in August and September of 2008. Moreover,
the game schedule overlapped the Olympic Games in
Beijing in August of 2008. These factors may have re-
sulted in the decreased excitement in supporting the
team’s scoring event.
Heart rate response to Fighters’ scoring tended to de-
crease as the total number of past visits to Sapporo
Dome to watch Fighters’ games increased (Table 2).
This result implies that responses to scoring became
duller as fan career matured. Thus, it is necessary to take
fan career into account when using heart rate responses
to evaluate a spectator’s psychological state.
Several limitations pertain to this study. First, the
number of subjects was small. Second, all subjects were
seated in the infield zone for this experiment. Therefore,
half of the subjects who usually watch games from the
outfield zone did not watch the games from their usual
standing position. Third, subjects did not watch the
games with their usual companions. In order to apply the
results of this study to baseball entertainment services,
data should be collected in a more typical situation. The
limitations of the present study will be addressed in our
future work.
In summary, the results of this study show that the
heart rate response of spectators has a significant corre-
lation with the subjective rating of the intensity of hap-
piness, vigor, and excitement in the field of professional
Table 2. Dependence of the heart rate (HR) responses to Fighters’ and opponents’ scoring on the total number of past visits to Sap-
poro Dome to watch Fighters’ games.
S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10
HR response to Fighters’ scoring 5.4 3.6 1.6 14.0 11.6 7.7 11.4 7.2 11.2 14.8
HR response to opponents’ scoring –1.4 –4.7 0.3 –3.4 –6.6 –2.7 –2.7 –3.2 –1.5 –0.3
Total number of past visits 250 153 120 64 50 48 42 36 31 28
K. Yoshino et al. / Natural Science 3 (2011) 255-258
Copyright © 2011 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS
258
baseball entertainment.
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry (METI). The authors express their gratitude to collaborating
company Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters for their helpful discussions
and for providing experimental field space. We also thank Dr. M. Mo-
chimaru and Dr. K. Naito of the National Institute of Advanced Indus-
trial Science and Technology (AIST) for their helpful discussions.
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