Risk, reward, dopamine surges. It’s all there. Packaged into three weeks across 130 college basketball games.

There’s a reason it’s called March Madness. Watching the highs, lows, and bewildering moments of the annual NCAA Division 1 Tournament can drive you crazy. Not to mention the emotional investment tens of millions of people place in brackets. In the 2026 tournament, 26.6 million March Madness brackets were submitted to ESPN's Tournament Challenge alone.

While much is written about the 67 men’s and 63 women’s college basketball games (counting the First Four) over the three weeks, there is very little written about the neurology and psychology of why we throw ourselves, emotionally and sometimes financially, into the NCAA Tournament.

The reasons we love March Madness are multidimensional. Our brain’s reward system and our cognitive biases collide with our basic need to connect with others and the joys of shared intensity and distraction.

^{Emotional Rollercoasters}

Throughout the NCAA Tournament, both wins and losses contribute to the overall enjoyment we get from watching and participating via brackets. In fact, our brains are literally wired to respond to unpredictability. The anticipation of each game alone triggers a dopamine response. This “dopaminergic reward” is so strong it is thought to be a common basis of addiction.

Next comes the action itself, followed by the win or loss. Both serotonin and cortisol surge, triggering feelings of pleasure and stress. Your brain doesn’t just get excited; it activates survival systems. Fans with the deepest emotional investment show the most dramatic spikes in cortisol. In a PLoS ONE study of soccer fans, cortisol levels jumped by 52%during a high-stakes match. Surprisingly, the most passionate fans were the youngest fans, because their young brains care most about belonging, and pay the price in adrenaline.

When your team wins, serotonin, the feel-good neurotransmitter, rises, helping regulate mood and promote social bonding. Losses, on the other hand, often trigger negative emotions like anger and frustration. It’s your brain’s chemistry responding to social defeat, which is why losses feel so personal.

Bracketology: You Will Never Win, But It Doesn’t Matter

The statistical odds of a perfect bracket are approximately 1 in 9.2 quintillion for random guessing and 1 in 120.2 billion with extensive basketball knowledge. Which means that no matter how much you think you know about college basketball, you will never be right. So why do tens of millions of people do it every year? Because it isn’t about winning, it’s about the process of predicting and predictability. Doing something annually that connects you with others gives you a sense of control, connection, and perhaps meaning.

Our brains like routines, organization, and patterns. And, psychologically, the ritual of filling out brackets can not only reduce anxiety but also boost confidence and give us a greater sense of control over chaos. Additionally, when one fills out brackets to compete with friends or coworkers, you’re creating a social bond. Completing a bracket is more about anchoring your emotions and identity than belief in winning.

But that doesn’t mean the incorrect selections don’t hurt. A cognitive bias we all share is called loss aversion. Essentially, humans feel the emotional impact of a loss twice as intensely as joy. What this means for March Madness is that once we’ve completed our brackets, no matter how slim the chances of each victory might be, we go all in. And thus, the dopamine rush of anticipation, the cortisol spike of high-stakes emotion, and the serotonin boost of wins, round and round again.

Our brains are wired for madness and trying to make sense of it. Every game is a trigger for the release of chemicals that bring us an array of emotions we love to feel. Better yet, filling out and tracking brackets gives us a sense of control and a way to connect with our peers. We will never pick the perfect bracket, but that is not the point. March Madness captivates us because it taps into our fundamental human needs for belonging, identity, and a sense of control over chaos. For some, it may seem like a silly way to spend the better part of late March, but in reality, we’re actually creating shared experiences, building social connections, and anchoring emotions to something bigger than ourselves.

Good luck with the 2026 Sweet 16.