Preliminary investigation of the confidence of sport spectators: importance of time, difficulty of the game, and team identification.

Three factors believed to play a role in the confidence sport spectors have in their team were examined: time until the competition began, the difficulty of the competition, and the fans' scores on identification with the team. 31 college students were asked to complete the Confidence subscale of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 on five separate occasions: 3 days before, 12 hours before, 3 hours before, immediately prior to, and at half-time of two basketball contests. Subjects also completed the Sport Spectator Identification Scale during the first testing session. Analysis indicated that subjects' confidence changed significantly as the competition approached but only for the more difficult contest. Further, highly and lowly identified subjects exhibited different patterns of confidence as the difficult competition approached.     

Biased evaluations of in-group and out-group spectator behavior at sporting events: the importance of team identification and threats to social identity

Previous researchers have demonstrated that sport fans often exhibit in-group bias by reporting more positive evaluations of fellow in-group fans than of rival out-group fans. The authors designed the present investigation to extend previous research by replicating past efforts in a field setting and to advance our understanding of the impact of social identity threat. The present authors hypothesized that, in addition to the base-level in-group bias effect, the bias effect would be most pronounced in situations involving a threat to one's social identity. The authors believed that fans of a losing team and fans of a home team would experience threats to their identity and, consequently, exhibit particularly high levels of in-group favoritism. Further, because past researchers had shown that one's level of group identification plays a vital role in social perception, the present authors predicted an interaction in which the greatest amount of bias would be exhibited by highly identified fans rooting for a home team that had lost. Data gathered from spectators (N = 148) at 2 North American college basketball games confirmed the authors' expectations, with the exception that the supporters of the winning team reported higher levels of bias. The authors discussed the factors underlying the unexpected game outcome effect and the use of in-group bias as a coping strategy.     

Sport team identification and willingness to consider anonymous acts of hostile aggression

Previous research indicated that a sizeable minority of individuals report a willingness to consider engaging in anonymous acts of instrumental aggression directed toward players and coaches of a rival team. Individuals with a high degree of identification with their favorite team were particularly likely to consider such acts. The current investigation was designed to extend this research by examining the likelihood that individuals would consider engaging in hostile anonymous aggression. It was expected that highly identified persons would be particularly likely to consider these acts, even though the acts would not provide a competitive advantage for their team. Data collected from 175 university students confirmed the expectations. In addition, the results indicated that males were more likely than females to report a willingness to consider the hostile aggressive acts and that participants were more likely to report a willingness to engage in less destructive acts (e.g., tripping an opposing player or coach) than more destructive acts (e.g., murdering an opposing player or coach). Aggr. Behav. 29:406–413, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Controllability and stability in the self-serving attributions of sport spectators

Spectators often attribute their athletic team's victories to internal causes and its losses to external causes (e.g., A. H. Hastorf & H. Cantril, 1954; R. R. Lau, 1984; L. Mann, 1974). This self-serving attributional pattern is most common among fans with a strong psychological attachment to their team (D. L. Wann & T. J. Dolan, 1994). The authors examined the relationships among identification, game outcome, and controllable and stable attributions. Their 1st hypothesis was that high-identification fans after a victory, compared with high-identification fans after a loss and low-identification fans after either outcome, would be more likely to exhibit self-serving attributional patterns by attributing their team's successes to controllable and stable causes. Their 2nd hypothesis was that high-identification fans would be more likely than low-identification fans to attribute their team's successes to internal causes and its failures to external causes. U.S. college students high and low in identification first watched their university's men's basketball team win or lose a contest and then completed measures of identification and attribution. The results confirmed the hypotheses.     

Reduced sensitivity to visual looming inflates the risk posed by speeding vehicles when children try to cross the road

Almost all locomotor animals respond to visual looming or to discrete changes in optical size. The need to detect and process looming remains critically important for humans in everyday life. Road traffic statistics confirm that children up to 15 years old are overrepresented in pedestrian casualties. We demonstrate that, for a given pedestrian crossing time, vehicles traveling faster loom less than slower vehicles, which creates a dangerous illusion in which faster vehicles may be perceived as not approaching. Our results from perceptual tests of looming thresholds show strong developmental trends in sensitivity, such that children may not be able to detect vehicles approaching at speeds in excess of 20 mph. This creates a risk of injudicious road crossing in urban settings when traffic speeds are higher than 20 mph. The risk is exacerbated because vehicles moving faster than this speed are more likely to result in pedestrian fatalities.     

Relationship between team identification and trait aggression: a replication

Research yielded no significant relationship between sport fandom and trait aggression. The current study replicated previous efforts using the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, an updated version of the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory. In contrast to past work, the current study did yield a significant relationship between fandom and aggression for men.     

Further validation of the economic subscale of the Sport Fan Motivation Scale.

The current investigation further validated the Economic, i.e., gambling, subscale of the Sport Fan Motivation Scale as subscale scores were highly correlated with both estimates of gambling frequency and estimates of money wagered by 91 college students.     

Examining relations of entertainment with social interaction motives and team identification

The goal was to investigate a potential causal pattern between the motives of sport spectators and team identification by using a cross-lagged panel design. Questionnaires were completed by 229 participants at the beginning and end of one NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) college football season for 4 mo. in the USA. The questionnaire included three items for each motive (Social Interaction and Entertainment), three items measuring team identification, and demographic items. The relation of Entertainment at Time 1 to team identification at Time 2 was larger than the relation of team identification at Time 1 to Entertainment at Time 2. This suggests that the motivation of Entertainment may lead to the formation of team identification more than team identification leads to Entertainment. However, the motive of Social Interaction did not show the same pattern. As results of this study suggested some spectator sport motives might lead to identification with a team, the hypothesis that all motives would be the basis of team identification might not be correct.     

Buying and building success: Perceptions of organizational strategies for improvement

What makes people like a team? We suggest and test here whether people’s perceptions of teams and organizations differ as a function of the strategy the teams pick on their way to success. Two main strategies are compared: (1) Development is a strategy focused on building and enhancing the abilities of current team members; and (2) Acquisition is a strategy focused on buying talent from outside the organization. Does the way to success matter? In other words, will the strategy a team endorse affects how much people like the team? In five studies (N = 1,672) we tested whether people prefer teams that were successful by being (a) built through long-term development of team members or (b) bought by acquiring expensive personal developed elsewhere. Across the five studies, people preferred built teams over bought teams, including sport teams and law firms. Effort and group cohesion were more attributed to build than to bought teams. In a “mediators contest,” effort attributions proved most robust. People like built teams more than bought ones, mostly because they value the effort and hard work that built teams represent.     

Evidence against the relative invariance of timing in handwriting

Gentner (1987) has called into question the role of timing information in a number of motor behaviours. The status of an invariant relative timing model for handwriting, however, is still unclear, due to lack of previous studies that have applied appropriate tests to a suitable database.

This study employs a direct application of the tests proposed by Gentner (1987) to handwriting samples collected from adult subjects, to ascertain whether an invariant temporal pattern was retained across changes in size and speed of writing.

In line with Gentner's (1987) study of typing, the findings are strongly against the invariant relative timing model and bring into question motor program models that posit timing as an independent parameter.