Sports have an unusual ability to bring people from every background together. Fans who may have little else in common can embrace after a touchdown, celebrate a home run together, or spend years passionately following the same athletes. But sports can also reveal some fascinating psychological contradictions in human behavior. Consider this: How can someone hold racist or discriminatory attitudes toward a particular group of people while simultaneously idolizing an athlete from that very same group? A fan may enthusiastically cheer for that player, defend him during arguments with friends, buy his jersey, and proudly wear his name across his back — yet outside the stadium, that same fan may hold very different attitudes toward people who share the athlete’s race or ethnicity. How do we psychologically reconcile those two things?
Understanding sports & racism
One explanation for how people can cheer an athlete on the field, yet still discriminate against that group of people off the field, involves cognitive dissonance — the discomfort created when we simultaneously hold contradictory beliefs. People are surprisingly good at reducing that discomfort without actually changing their broader attitudes. Rather than reconsidering a stereotype, someone can simply make an exception: He’s different. He’s one of the good ones.
Psychologists sometimes describe this process of selectively differentiating people as subtyping. When we encounter someone who contradicts a stereotype, we don’t necessarily abandon the stereotype. Instead, we mentally place that individual into a special category. The beloved athlete therefore doesn’t disprove the prejudice; he becomes an exception that allows it to remain intact.
In addition to cognitive dissonance and subtyping, sports introduce another powerful psychological force: social identity. Human beings naturally categorize people into groups—particularly us and them. Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, geography and countless other characteristics often create those boundaries— but sports can rearrange them remarkably quickly. Put an athlete in the uniform of our favorite team and suddenly another identity becomes more important.
He’s a Tiger. He’s a Yankee. He’s a Patriot. He’s a Knick.
Most importantly, he’s one of us.
His touchdown becomes our touchdown. His home run becomes our home run. His success becomes connected to our identity, our community and even our happiness.
Take for example the symbolism of the sports jersey. A person who ordinarily expresses prejudice toward a particular racial or ethnic group may happily spend $150 to walk around with the last name of someone from that very group written across his back. For several hours on game day, race seemingly becomes irrelevant.
But is that really colorblindness? Perhaps sometimes it is. Sports unquestionably provide opportunities for people to admire individuals from backgrounds different from their own. That exposure can challenge stereotypes and potentially change attitudes, though admiration for an athlete doesn’t necessarily translate into greater acceptance of everyone who looks like that athlete. The player may instead become valued primarily because of what he provides—touchdowns, points, victories, championships and entertainment.
But what happens when the uniform comes off? The Black quarterback adored on Sunday becomes an ordinary Black man on Monday. The Latino baseball star whose jersey someone proudly wears becomes an unknown Latino man standing beside that same fan at the grocery store. The admiration for a minority athlete on the field will occasionally transfer off the field, but often things stay the same — cheer for the player on the field, but see him a different, less positive way off the field.
Final thoughts
Sports can teach us a lot, including some fascinating lessons about prejudice. Team identity demonstrates that people are capable of looking beyond racial and ethnic differences remarkably quickly when another shared identity becomes more important. Unfortunately, we have also learned that those feelings don’t always transfer beyond the field. For a few hours, sports can bring people together in ways that everyday life often cannot — even the most ardent racist may enthusiastically cheer for, admire, and proudly wear the jersey of an athlete from a racial or ethnic group he otherwise despises. But when the game ends and that shared team identity disappears, old prejudices can quickly return. Perhaps the real challenge isn’t learning how to see beyond our differences; sports have already shown us that we can. The challenge is learning to do it after the game ends and the players come off the field.
