Sports Fans

Term Paper Title	Sports Fans
# of Words	626
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.5

Sports Fans

Psycologists often look to find patterns of behavior among similar people in similar circumstances. One such study is
that of the psycological effect of sports teams and their fans. In a study at Murry State University, Daniel L. Wann
and Thomas J. Dolan tried to prove that fans that had a high association with their favorite team would be biassed in
their evaluation of the past, preasent, and future preformances. Wann and Thomas' study set out to prove that
students at Murry State that had a high assosiation with their basketball team, when asked about their records in
previous seasons would estimate more than actually were won. Also, if the students were asked about their
predictions for the team in the present year, they would be a lot higher than they probably could acheive. Finally they
would have them make predictions of their preformances of the future, and see if there was any pattern among those
people. To accomplish this, Wann and Dolan used 106 sublects. Fourty four were male and sixty two were female,
student volunteers, whom took part in the study for extra credit. At the time of this test the Murry State basketball
team was first in their conference with a 4-1 record. The study consisted of a packet with many different questions in
it that would help rate the people. The first page rated the persons identifiability with the team. It consisted of seven
questions, each with a rating of 1 - 8 in association. The final two pages of the packet were the subjects assesment
of the team. The subjects were asked questions like:how many games had the team won the previous year(The
answer was 17); How many wins will they have this season (the answer to that ended up being 18); and how many
wins do you see for the next season. The subjects then answered four self r...

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