The night Barack Obama won the presidential election, his supporters stormed the streets. In Philadelphia, I saw them parade down the sidewalks and the roads, drumming on trash cans and stopping cars in traffic. The crowd cheered and chanted in unison, “Yes we can!” Those who had voted Democrat felt like they were a part of the victory. Meanwhile, Republicans sulked quietly and dejectedly. They had already been distancing themselves from John McCain for quite some time now, and blamed his loss on the shortcomings of the candidate himself, not the Republican party. The behaviors of both Democrats and Republicans can be explained by concepts of the theory of social identity—the former group was basking in reflected glory and the latter was cutting off reflected failure.

The theory of social identity is a well-substantiated explanation for the psychological basis of intergroup discrimination. It states that individuals, in an effort to increase their self-esteem, tend to obtain part of their sense of identity from the groups to which they belong. A corollary of the theory of social identity is the concept of basking in reflected glory (BIRGing), by which individuals associate themselves with successful others to the point that the achievements of the others is regarded as those of the individuals. Its inverse is cutting off reflected failure (CORFing), by which individuals distance themselves and minimize their connection to the failings of their group.

The phenomenon of BIRGing was explored in an influential 1976 paper by Robert Cialdini and his colleagues titled “Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies.” In their first experiment, the researchers found that undergraduate students wore school-related apparel in greater numbers after their university’s football team had won a match. In two other experiments, they showed that students used the pronoun “we” more often if the university’s team had won than if it had lost.

The principles of BIRGing and CORFing were shown in American politics in Chris Miller’s 2009 paper titled “Yes We Did! Basking in Reflected Glory and Cutting Off Reflected Failure in the 2008 Presidential Election,” which included two studies of Obama and McCain supporters. The first study found that individuals would display political posters and lawn signs supporting Obama for a greater length of time than posters that supported McCain, showing people’s desire to associate with winning parties and dissociate with losing parties. In the second study, Miller had individuals evaluate (both before and after the election) their feelings toward the candidate they supported in how “warm and friendly” they felt toward him. Again, as predicted, the average scores McCain supporters gave decreased and the average scores Obama supporters gave increased after the election.

The 2008 presidential election was unique in many ways, one of which was the extent to which voters were enamored with Obama. Perhaps one reason for this idolization was the desire to BIRG. As Miller suggested in his paper, it would be interesting to analyze how this BIRGing translates from Obama’s campaign to his administration. With his job approval rating currently at 52% (down from a high of almost 70%), will his adherents continue to bask in his reflected glory or will they decide to cut off his reflected failure, and distance themselves from the candidate they once supported, in order to preserve their own self-esteem?

Excerpted from my psychology paper, “Social Identity Theory in Politics: Studies of Basking in Reflected Glory and Cutting Off Reflected Failure”