Attributions of Highly Identified Sports Spectators

Previous research examining the tendency for sports spectators to internalize team successes while externalizing team failures has been inconsistent. Several studies have found support for this success/failure attributional bias, but others have not. The current study tested the hypothesis that the success/failure bias would be found among American spectators who were high in identification with a target team but that spectators low in identification would be only minimally biased in their attributions concerning competition outcome. The results of a study testing 90 basketball fans varying in degree of identification supported the hypothesis.