As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Mr. Pressler, from South Dakota, had been highly identified with the act.
"Individuals that are highly identified with the team show extreme arousal compared to the average fan," he said.
"These highly identified people are more likely to act in an aggressive fashion when the team suffers," Dr. Wann said.
Once the researchers divided the highly identified Whites into these two groups, the picture rapidly came into focus.
"It's the highly identified fans who demonstrate this fierce connection and feel elation and dejection along with the team," Dr. Cialdini said.
The sports organization that increases its number of highly identified fans will reap the consequences of increased support.
Solutions are proposed in an attempt to maximize research value while protecting privacy, but these can fail — and, as Gymrek et al. have recently confirmed, biological materials themselves contain highly identifying information through their genetic material alone.
A raft of studies since then has found that "highly identified" fans -- both men and women -- are not only less likely to abandon a team when it is doing poorly, but tend to blame their team's failures on officiating or bad luck rather than the other team's skill.
In the 1990s, researchers began finding that "highly identified" fans experienced higher levels of arousal — measured by heart rate, brain waves and perspiration — and had fewer bouts of depression and alienation than nonfans.
