Seeing Red or Feeling Blue: Differentiated Intergroup Emotions and Ingroup Identification in Soccer Fans

Abstract

In this study we examined how social identity threat, contextualized as soccer fans’ reactions to their team’s success or failure, can lead to differentiated emotional expression as a function of ingroup identification. We predicted that negative responses to threat (a team losing a match) would be qualitatively differentiated for lower and higher ingroup identifiers in terms of both emotions and action tendencies. English male soccer fans were tested in three sessions (following matches resulting in two losses and one win). The findings supported the hypotheses: following match losses lower identifiers felt sad but not angry, whereas higher identifiers felt angry but not sad. These qualitatively different negative emotional reactions to match loss mediated reported action tendencies. We discuss how these findings support intergroup emotions theory and the predictive utility of social identification in discerning differentiated emotional and behavioral reactions to intergroup threat.