ooses. The researchers discuss previous work done by Hastorf & Cantril (1954) that indicates that spectators will attribute their team’s losses to external causes, and wins to internal causes. Wann & Dolan (1994) found that when the spectators have strong psychological attachments to their team that the self-serving bias is most apparent (Wann & Schrader, 2000). Participants in Wann & Schrader’s study were asked to fill out a questionnaire after watching a basketball game. The questionnaire contained demographic information, the Sport Spectator Identification Scale, and questions measuring the participants’ attributions. The researchers had two main hypotheses. The first hypothesis stated that spectators with high-identification would be less likely to attribute their team’s loss to “controllable and stable causes” after a loss than they would after a win, and spectators with low-identification would be least likely to attribute either a win or a lose to internal causes. The second hypothesis stated that spectators with high-identification would be more likely to attribute their team’s lose to uncontrollable causes and win to controllable causes than spectators with low-identification. The results of the experiment showed that fans who high-identification were indeed more likely to attribute their team’s loses to external conditions and wins to internal conditions. When the teams of the high-identification spectators won the self-serving bias was more likely to be used than when the teams lost. Wann & Schrader speculate that since high-identification fans showed self-serving biases more after their team won than when they lost that the participants had greater interest in boosting their egos, than protecting them. High-identification spectators were also more likely to view the crowd as a causal force on whether their team won or lost (Wann & Schrader, 2000). Adults are not the o...
