A dispositional approach to hostility toward sports commentators in online arenas

Abstract

A limited amount of studies examined the effects of sports commentary on online readers’ attitudes toward online sports commentators. Approaching disposition effects hypothesis in online arenas, this study examined the effects of the positive/negative sports commentaries and the win/loss of readers’ favorite team on their hostility toward online sports commentators. A two (the win of the favorite team versus the loss of the favorite team) by two (the positive commentaries versus the negative commentaries) within-subjects repeated measures experiment with emotional responses as a covariate was designed to measure readers’ hostility toward online sports commentators. Results showed that disposition effects activated by the win/loss and the positive/negative commentaries significantly led readers to a higher level of hostility toward online sports commentators. Moreover, main effects for the positive/negative commentaries were stronger than main effects for the win/loss of the favorite team. Although readers’ emotional responses could not directly moderate the effects of the positive/negative commentaries on the win/loss of the favorite team, online readers with a more positive level of emotional responses to sports commentaries reported a lower level of hostility toward online sports commentators.