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We usually compare ourselves downward
Looking Down
Psychologist Leon Festinger laid this out for individuals in 1954 as social comparison theory. Looking up at someone can motivate a person to do better. Looking down tends to produce attitudes of superiority, prejudice, and bias.
Groups Compare Too
Tajfel and Turner carried the idea over to groups. People have an incentive to compare their own group favorably with other groups, because it lifts the self-esteem of the individual and of the group. They called the result positive distinctiveness: different from the out group, in the best possible way. What counts as the best possible way depends on the groups. Sports fans might point to their own good behavior at the stadium.
Higher Stakes
The stakes rise with the kind of group being compared. Poor white Americans who discriminate against poor Black Americans get to feel superior to that group, rather than measuring themselves against wealthy white Americans.
Why do threatened people compare downward?
Festinger's 1954 paper held that people compare themselves with others to judge their abilities and opinions when no objective measure exists, and that they prefer similar others. In 1981, Thomas Wills proposed downward comparison theory: people whose self-esteem is threatened look at others who are worse off to feel better. Laboratory experiments after Wills found that people who had received threatening feedback often chose to look at the results of others who did worse.
How does a winning team lift its fans?
Robert Cialdini and colleagues studied this in 1976 at several American universities, counting how many students wore school apparel on the Monday after football games. More students wore it after a win than after a loss. Cialdini called this basking in reflected glory. Students also said we more often when describing a win and they more often when describing a loss.
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