Understanding the Relationship between Sport Team Identification and Dimensions of Social Well-Being

Branscombe and Wann (1991) reported a significant relationship between identification with a sport team (i.e., a fan's psychological connection to a team, see Wann, Melnick, Russell, & Pease, 2001) and psychological well-being. Specifically, they found that identification with a team was positively correlated with personal self-esteem and the frequency of experiencing positive emotions and negatively correlated with depression, alienation, and experiences of negative affect. Subsequent investigations replicated and expanded on Branscombe and Wann's initial findings. For instance, Wann (1994) demonstrated that identification was positively correlated with collective self-esteem. Furthermore, Wann, Inman, Ensor, Gates, and Caldwell (1999) examined the psychological health of sport fans using the Profile of Mood States (Grove & Prapavessis, 1992). Their work revealed that persons with strong attachments to a local team reported higher levels of vigor and self-esteem, and lower levels of fatigue, anger, confusion, tension, and depression. Another study found that higher levels of identification were associated with greater levels of satisfaction with one's social life (Wann & Pierce, 2005). Thus, the positive relationship between sport team identification and well-being appears to be a robust finding, one that is not limited to specific testing locales (Wann, Walker, Cygan, Kawase, & Ryan, 2005), sport seasons (Wann, Keenan, & Page, in press), or cultures (Wann, Dimmock, & Grove, 2003). Wann (2006) developed the Team Identification--Social Psychological Health Model to explain the relationship between identification and well-being. This framework proposes that identification with a sport team leads to both enduring and temporary forms of social connections with others. When someone resides in the environment where the team is found (e.g., a fan of a college football team who lives on campus at that university), he or she may gain enduring connections. Fans following a distant team will not have the opportunity to acquire enduring connections. However, these persons may gain temporary connections when they find themselves momentarily accompanied by other fans of the team (e.g., a fan of a university football team who lives several hundred miles from the school but who watches the team's games on television with several other similarly displaced fans). The two types of connections are hypothesized to lead to improved well-being, although this relationship will likely be moderated by threats to the fan's identity (e.g., poor team performance) and attempts to cope with the threat (e.g., biased attributions, see Wann & Schrader, 2000). Finally, Wann's perspective suggests that team identification will be more closely related to social well-being than personal well-being, a finding consistent with the social psychological literature (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999; Rubin & Hewstone, 1998). The current investigation was designed to further test Wann's (2006) theoretical framework by examining the social well-being dimensions most closely associated with team identification. As noted earlier, previous research has found that team identification was related to several different assessments of social well-being, including satisfaction with one's social life (Wann & Pierce, 2005), loneliness (Wann et al., 2003), alienation (Branscombe & Wann, 1991), and collective self-esteem (Wann, 1994). Recently, Keyes (1998) constructed the Social Well-being Scale to assess five dimensions of social well-being. These dimensions are: social integration, social acceptance, social contribution, social actualization, and social coherence. Social integration concerns one's feeling that he or she is a part of society and includes feelings of belonging and perceptions of commonality with others (e.g., "I feel close to other people in my community"). Social acceptance involves perceptions of others, including beliefs that others are trustworthy and capable of kindness (e. …