ABSTRACT

Team identity is periodically disrupted by identity threat, yet minimal research has addressed how life-disrupting threats impact team identity. In the current study, the authors employed a case study design to examine the effects of a life-disrupting threat (i.e., the start of the COVID-19 pandemic) on team identity. The authors, leveraging interviews and participant journaling, examined individuals who identify with at least one sport team, finding that team identity was mostly “inactive” as this life-disrupting threat set in. Further, although participants recognized the importance of their fandom in terms of social connectivity (i.e., relationships with fellow fans) and opportunity for escape, they emphasized that, overall, being a fan was unimportant during the early months of the pandemic. Collectively, these findings highlight the need to study team identity (and identity threat) from a more “macro” perspective – that is, considering fandom in conjunction with other salient factors in fans’ lives.

摘要

团队身份会定期受到身份威胁的干扰，但很少有研究解决如何扰乱生活威胁会影响团队的认同。在当前的研究中，作者采用了案例研究设计来研究扰乱生命的威胁（即 COVID-19 大流行的开始）对团队认同的影响。作者利用访谈和参与者日记，对至少认同一支运动队的个人进行了调查，发现随着这种扰乱生活的威胁的出现，球队的身份大多是“不活跃的”。此外，尽管参与者认识到他们的粉丝群体的重要性他们强调，总体而言，在大流行的最初几个月，成为粉丝并不重要。总的来说，这些发现凸显了从更“宏观”的角度研究团队身份（和身份威胁）的必要性——也就是说，