Basking in Reflected Glory and Compliance with Requests from People Like Us

Abstract

Look into the stands at any major professional or collegiate sporting event these days, and you most likely will find a sea of team colors. Fans adorn themselves in their team's jackets, tee shirts, sweatshirts, and caps. They wear jerseys bearing the name and number of their favorite player. Faces and even a few bare torsos painted in team colors are not uncommon. Sports merchandising has become a multibillion dollar business and a significant source of revenue for colleges and professional sports franchises. But, nearly four decades ago, when the sports merchandise industry was a small fraction of what it is today, Robert Cialdini and some of his colleagues wondered about the psychological underpinnings of this curious behavior. They dubbed this effort to associate oneself with successful people basking in reflected glory (BIRG), and generations of psychology students have been intrigued and delighted by the concept ever since. This chapter has two goals. First, to look at theory and research on reflected glory basking with special attention to a couple of theoretical loose ends. Second, to examine in depth but one example of current research that ties back to the BIRG concept. Appropriate for a volume devoted to the legacy of Robert Cialdini, that example is the effect of similarity and compliance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)