THE IMAGE OF FOOTBALL FANS AS THEIR PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING MARKER

Abstract

The article is devoted to the questions of football fans’ image formation within the framework of personality psychological well-being paradigms. The emphasis in the article is made on the social significance of the problem of personality psychological well-being support and football fans’ image. It is shown, that the football fans’ image characteristics play the key role in the process of its formation, and the basic characteristics of football fans’ image (empiric referents) are a healthy spirit, football niceties knowing, solidarity, participation in away games, fanaticism as a way of self-assertion, local patriotism, vandalism, obscene language usage, xenophobia, fanaticism as a departure from reality. It is shown, that a healthy spirit of Ukrainian football fans should be considered as one of the most important features of their image, and a moral atmosphere on the sports grounds is mainly created by the fans’ behaviour and significantly influence the sportsmen moral-psychological state and their further victory or defeat. The research results allow revealing the presence/absence of the football fans psychological well-being basic components on the assumption of their image. Football fans’ image has several vivid psychological features, distinguishing it from the images of the other categories of sports fans. Football fans’ image has a large number of significant indicators and as a stereotype in the public conscience is limited by the following empiric referents: departure from reality, xenophobia of fans, obscene language usage, vandalism, the correlation of fanaticism with the local patriotism, fanaticism as a way of selfassertion, the fans’ support of the team in away games, fans’ solidarity, football niceties knowing, the fans’ healthy spirit. The analysis allows us to state, that among six psychological well-being basic components in the football fans’ behaviour there are only two, i.e. it is realized partially, only 33%. The football fans’ state of psychological well-being is not satisfactory and this fact indicates the social significance of the football fans’ psychological well-being and image support problem.