Thursday, March 3, 2016

Feeling Like a Loser? Don't Worry. I Feel the Same Way, Too, and We Probably Know Why.

Imagine yourself as a member of a soccer team. You and four of your teammates scored plus points for the team, but the rest fail to score and even suffered penalties, while most players from the opposing team score more points during a match. The opposing team won, and the team of which you are a member lost as a result. What would you feel? You would usually feel bad about the defeat, even though you have nothing to do directly with it. Why is it so?

Part of the answer may lie in the public generalization of a group in terms of its average character deduced from the performances of all of its members. A concrete analogy for this one is a stained shirt. The stain may not affect some portions, but the entire shirt has blemish.

People certainly generalize a group positively if its members who perform positive actions outnumber those who perform negative ones. Some decent people may feel that the actions of others who belong to the same group as they do water down their efforts because of this.

People usually tend to evaluate a group based on what its majority thinks, says, and acts, which could affect the rest of the group, as well as those to whom the majority does them. It could either spell benefit or damage to the psyches of the members of a group.

For example, affected individuals take measures to prevent males from committing major crimes such as robbery, murder, or rape as their peers have done, because more males than females commit such crimes. Males protecting their females from other males, confrontational feminist slogans, and socio-legal and psychological deterrents to all males are examples.

Experts call the positive phenomenon "basking in reflected glory" and the negative one "cutting off reflected failure".
When a person "basks in reflected glory", one feels very positive for the accomplishments of one's peers and may even claim them for oneself. When that person "cuts off reflected failure", one tries to dissociate oneself from the shortcomings of one's peers, referring to them as "them".

People tend to forget that they carry the reputations of their peer groups, and that public image DOES matter. I only hope that each of us will be careful not to do anything that could destroy our images and those of our peer groups.

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