Ingroup Favoritism: The Chicago Cubs

It’s that time of year again for my fellow baseball lovers - the World Series. Being from Chicago, I have grown up watching the Cubs “Curse of the Billy Goat” be proven true over and over again. Then, it happened. The Chicago Cubs finally made it to the World Series... but against the Cleveland Indians. Since both of these teams have not won the World Series in decades, the whole country went wild. This World Series would make history. Of course, with an event as special and intense as this, there was bound to be plenty of trash talking and stereotyping of the enemies from the fans on both sides. All the trash-talking and stereotyping definitely took its toll on the game and its players. When looking at the World Series from a psychology perspective,

I found multiple different ways that social psychology came into play.
The psychological concept of ingroup favoritism was a major property of the World Series.

Ingroup favoritism is when we regularly prefer our own ingroup over another outgroup. In other words, it is when we favor those who are similar to us over those who are not similar to us. In the case of the World Series, the Indians fans favored other Indians fans over the Cubs fans and vice versa. This favoritism, in turn, increased the amount of trash talk from Clevelanders to Chicagoans and Chicagoans to Clevelanders because clearly the fans did not like the opposing team. Ingroup favoritism was also seen when the players themselves highly favored their own team over their opponents. Because they loved their team and “disliked” the other team, they may have been motivated to play better and show they are truly better than the other, therefore leading to the Cubs big

win.
The psychological term, stereotype threat, also played a big role against the Cubbies and Indians in the World Series. Stereotype threat is when a member of a group is at risk for confirming their negative stereotype. This threat can in turn disrupt performance, such as temporarily warping an athlete’s athletic abilities. For the Cubs, we saw this happen in game one. Everyone who is not a Cubs fan (or even some who are) has a stereotype of the Cubs - that they choke under pressure. This stereotype may have caused the Cubs to make more errors than they normally would have for this post-season. Consequently, once an error was made under pressure, the threat increased and the Cubs players then made more errors. This then proved the negative stereotype to be true. The same stereotype threat may have happened to the Indians in game six. For example, Cleveland is stereotyped as “just a joke” to some. Whenever the players made careless mistakes, the stereotype threat may have increased because the players had that particular negative stereotype in the back of their minds. Like the Cubs, they continued to make more errors because the threat affected their performance, which proved their negative stereotype to be true as well. Unfortunately, when these stereotypes were confirmed, it again increased the trash talking of opponents.
“They choke under pressure”.

“They’re losers”. Their fans are “yuppies with BMW’s”. It was through these stereotypes that another psychological term became prevalent during this event - discrimination. Discrimination is negative and harmful behavior towards a group based on their group membership. It is unjust treatment towards other groups. The Cleveland Indians’ fans were discriminating against the Cubs and their fans by saying things such as the statements previously mentioned. They discriminated against them because they felt superior to them. For example, Indians’ fans screamed negative remarks at the Cubs players after games as well as tweeted hurtful things about them and their abilities. Sadly, Cubs fans discriminated against the Cleveland Indians, too. Of course, when it comes to rooting for your favorite team, discrimination and trash talking to the rivals is bound to happen one way or

another.
Psychological concepts can be found in the most random of ways, such as in baseball or other sports games. Through the concepts of ingroup favoritism, stereotype threat, and discrimination, we can understand why trash talking occurs so commonly around sports. It is also through these social psychology concepts that we can see why any sports players performances either increase or decrease at certain times. In this case, however, the Cubs performance increased overall and their team finally pulled through. Go Cubs Go!