Even if you’re not an avid winter sports fan, it’s hard not to be intrigued by this year’s Olympic Games. Over the past two weeks, I’ve felt disappointed when Lindsey Vonn crashed in the downhill event, inspired while watching graceful figure skating, and proud when both the U.S. women’s and men’s national hockey teams took gold. Although I recognized only a few of the American athletes, I found myself strongly identifying with anyone clad in the red, white, and blue of Team USA and eager to share their ups and downs.

          The modern Olympic Games, which commenced in the summer of 1896 in Athens, are a triumphant symbol of international cooperation, with hundreds of countries agreeing to shared regulations and norms. However, as psychologists Youngju Kim and Jinkyung Na explain in their 2020 paper titled “The Olympic paradox: The Olympics and intergroup biases,” these unifying games also, somewhat counterintuitively, engender greater nationalist sentiment and hostility toward other groups. Throughout several longitudinal studies, Kim and Na (2020) found that Koreans tended to express more negative attitudes toward outgroups, specifically Southeast Asians, during the 2016 and 2018 Olympic Games when compared to their attitudes prior to these international contests. This increased bias toward outgroups also carried over to worsened behavioral intentions: during the Olympics, Korean participants expressed a lower desire to assist Southeast Asian outgroup members by donating to charity.

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Social Identity Theory & Realistic Conflict Theory

          This troubling pattern of international competition, even in the form of friendly sporting events, sparking greater outgroup bias is not random, but rather reflects underlying psychological tendencies. Our desire to strongly identify with our country’s team and to take pride in their victories, no matter how obscure the event, ties back to the key principle of Social Identity Theory. Social Identity Theory was proposed in the late 1970s by Tajfel and Turner, and establishes that we derive much of our self-esteem and self-worth from the groups we belong to. Thus, it is understandable for people to display some level of ingroup favoritism, which, on the flip side, naturally begets bias against other groups if left unchecked. When people adamantly cheer for their own country’s team, it can lead them to also express greater prejudice toward other countries.

          Additionally, Muzafer Sherif’s Realistic Conflict Theory posits that hostility and eventual prejudice between groups fundamentally stem from competition over limited resources. Major sports events like the Olympics, where countries must vie for a limited prize, create directly competitive conditions where outgroup bias is more likely to arise.

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Basking in Reflected Glory

          In addition to the sporting events themselves, we are personally drawn to and invested in the Olympic Games because of their broader symbolic ties to our identities. According to Social Identity Theory, when our country’s Olympic team takes home a gold medal, we feel triumphant and proud of ourselves, too, even though we had almost nothing to do with their success. The tendency to exclaim that “We won gold” can be traced back to a phenomenon termed Basking in Reflected Glory (or BIRGing), which was observed by psychologist Robert Cialdini in the 1970s. When members of our group—whether in sports, politics, business, or other domains—receive positive attention, we tend to emphasize our proximity to them in hopes that their success will translate to a favorable reflection of our own character. We wear their merchandise, prominently display their yard signs, and publicly associate with the team.

          Due to Social Identity Theory, when another country beats our country’s Olympic athletes, we feel personally slighted, too. Instead of BIRGing, Cutting Off Reflected Failure (CORFing) tends to occur, wherein we publicly distance ourselves from the group to protect our individual appearances and avoid negative associations. Interestingly, we also shift how we frame our group membership, using more phrases like “They messed up” to describe our team’s blunders rather than assuming shared responsibility through the phrase “We messed up.”

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Conclusion

          At the end of the day, the Olympic Games are an incredible showcase of talent, determination, and friendly competition that inspire positive spirit and captivate the attention of billions. Wang et al. (2025) studied the attitudes of residents of the Chinese city of Hangzhou during the Asian Games, which are the second-largest international sporting competition after the Olympics. Using structural equation modeling, they found that being involved in the Asian Games had a direct positive effect on participants’ self-reported nationalist identity, and, importantly, being involved in the Asian Games also positively impacted Hangzhou residents’ views of their city and their subjective well-being. We belong to dozens of social groups on different levels, and, according to Self-Categorization Theory, our group identity priorities constantly shift depending on our immediate contexts. International competitions like the Olympics make our national identities more salient, allowing us to root for and to be part of something larger than ourselves.

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References

Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing). In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social psychology (p. 104). SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412956253.n59

Kim, Y., & Na, J. (2020). The Olympic paradox: The Olympics and intergroup biases. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 25(1), 26-43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220931160

Sherif, M. (1961). Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave experiment. University of Oklahoma Book Exchange.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (2004). The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior. In J. T. Jost & J. Sidanius (Eds.), Political psychology: Key readings (pp. 276–293). Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203505984-16

Turner, J. C., & Reynolds, K. J. (2012). Self-categorization theory. In P. A. Van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 399–417). SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446249222.n46

Wang, J., He, Z., & Lu, Y. (2025). The impact of large-scale sports events on national identity: A structural equation model based on the residents’ perspective. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 6, 1479425. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspor.2024.1479425

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