Distancing After Group Success and Failure. Basking in Reflected Glory and Cutting Off Reflected Failure

Abstract

We examined two image-maintenance processes by which people manipulate their association with others. The tendency to bask in reflected glory as a means of increasing one's association with successful others, as well as the tendency to cut off reflected failure as a means of decreasing one's association with unsuccessful others, was tested. Male and female college students were initially involved in a group task and then were assigned to one of three group performance feedback conditions: failure, no information, or success. Self-report and behavioral (taking and wearing of team badges) dependent measures of "distancing" showed that people in the failure group manifested less association with their group than did the persons in the no-information feedback and success groups; moreover, there was a tendency on behavioral but not self-report measures for persons in the success group to manifest more association with their group than for persons in the no-information feedback group. Therefore, more support was garnered for the "cutting-off-reflected-failure" process than for the "basking-in-reflected-glory" process as an image-maintenance tactic. © 1986 American Psychological Association.