Sagan Ladd

Abstract: The current investigation was designed to extend previous work on the aggressive actions of youth baseball spectators (Hennessy & Schwartz, 2007) by incorporating team identification into the research. Team identification, the extent to which a fan feels a psychological connection to a team, (Wann, Melnick, Russell, & Pease, 2001) has been found to be an important predictor of a wide variety of aggressive actions among sport consumers (Wann, 2006). Spectators (N = 80) at youth baseball games completed a questionnaire packet assessing demographics, team identification, vengeance, anger, hostility, and the likelihood of acting in a verbally or physically aggressive manner toward a number of potential targets (e.g., officials, opposing players). Consistent with expectations, team identification predicted a willingness to commit verbally aggressive acts. However, identification did not predict physical aggression.

TL;DR: Wann et al. as discussed by the authors examined the relationship between team identification and the establishment and maintenance of social connections and found that identification with a high school football team was positively correlated with both social well-being and social connections.