Abstract
An experiment was conducted to test the generality of a self-evaluation maintenance model of behavior in a situation involving individuals’ associations with a group. Male and female undergraduates completed a sports team questionnaire, which assessed their preferences to see both psychologically close and distant opponents of their home team win in high-relevance (football) and low-relevance (water polo) sports contests. As predicted from the model, participants preferred psychologically close opponents to win more in the low- than in the high-relevance sport, but preferred psychologically distant opponents to win more in the high- than in the low-relevance sport. Participants also preferred close opponents to win more than distant opponents. Implications for group identification and reference-group influences are discussed.
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An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1984 meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association in Atlanta, GA. We would like to thank Del Cahoon and Steve Hobbs for their assistance.
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Reeves, R.A., Tesser, A. Self-evaluation maintenance in sports team rivalries. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 23, 329–331 (1985). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330173
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330173