others. Support for these ideas comes from the telephone study of Ari-
zona State University students. Before being asked about the home-
team victory or loss, they were given a test of their general knowledge.
The test was rigged so that some of the students would fail badly while
the others would do quite well.
So at the time they were asked to describe the football score, half of
the students had experienced recent image damage from their failure
of the test. These students later showed the greatest need to manipulate
their connections with the football team to salvage their prestige. If they
were asked to describe the team defeat, only 17 percent used the pro-
noun “we” in so doing. If, however, they were asked to describe the
win, 41 percent said “we.”
The story was very different, though, for the students who had done
well on the general knowledge test. They later used “we” about equally,
whether they were describing a home-team victory (25 percent) or defeat
(24 percent). These students had bolstered their images through their
own achievement and didn’t need to do so through the achievement
of others. This finding tells me that it is not when we have a strong
feeling of recognized personal accomplishment that we will seek to
bask in reflected glory. Instead, it will be when prestige (both public
and private) is low that we will be intent upon using the successes of
associated others to help restore image.
I think it revealing that the remarkable hubbub following the Amer-
ican hockey team victory in the 1980 Olympics came at a time of recently
diminished American prestige. The U.S. government had been helpless
to prevent both the holding of American hostages in Iran and the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan. It was a time when, as a citizenry, we needed
the triumph of that hockey team and we needed to display or even
manufacture our connections to it. We should not be surprised to learn,
for instance, that outside the hockey arena, in the aftermath of the win
over the Soviet team, scalpers were getting a hundred dollars a pair for
ticket stubs.
Although the desire to bask in reflected glory exists to a degree in all
of us, there seems to be something special about people who would
wait in the snow to spend fifty dollars apiece for the shreds of tickets
to a game they had not attended, presumably to “prove” to friends back
home that they had been present at the big victory. Just what kind of
people are they? Unless I miss my guess, they are not merely great
sports aficionados; they are individuals with a hidden personality
flaw—a poor self-concept. Deep inside is a sense of low personal worth
that directs them to seek prestige not from the generation or promotion
of their own attainments, but from the generation or promotion of their
associations with others of attainment. There are several varieties of
152 / Influence