Terror management and the vicissitudes of sports fan affiliation: the effects of mortality salience on optimism and fan identification

The present research examined the hypothesis derived from terror management theory that identifications with sports teams shield against the potential consequences of awareness of death. Experiment I demonstrated that Dutch p articipants who were reminded of their death expressed greater optimism abo ut the results of the national soccer team compared to a control condition. Experiment 2 conceptually replicated this finding with American participan ts and college sports teams. In addition, Experiment 2 tested the hypothesi s that success of a team is a prerequisite for sports fan affiliation to fu nction as a buffer against death concerns. Before the college football seas on began; participants who were reminded about death expressed greater rela tive preference for a more salient, but less successful college football te am over a national college champion basketball team compared to control par ticipants. However, after the football team lost its first game of the seas on, participants who were reminded about death indicated gr eater relative preference for the successful basketball team. Results are discussed with r egard to the psychological function of social identifications. Copyright (C ) 2000 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.