Psychologists often try to find patterns of behavior among similar people in similar circumstances. One of these studies is that of the psychological effect of sports teams and their fans. In a study at Murry State University, Daniel L. Wann and Thomas J. Dolan sought to demonstrate that fans who had a high association with their favorite team would be biased in their evaluation of past, present, and future performance. Wann and Thomas' study set out to demonstrate that Murry State students who had a high bond with their basketball team, when asked about their records in previous seasons, valued more than they actually won. Furthermore, if students were asked what their predictions are for the team in the current year, the results would be much higher than they could probably achieve. Finally they would ask them to make predictions about their future performance and see if there was any pattern among those people. To achieve this goal, Wann and Dolan used 106 underbeds. Forty-four were male and sixty-two female student volunteers who took part in the study for extra credit. At the time of this test the Murry State basketball team was first in the conference with a 4-1 record. The study consisted of a package with many different questions that would help evaluate people. The first page assessed people's identifiability with the team. It consisted of seven questions, each rated from 1 to 8 in association. The last two pages of the packet contained the team's evaluation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Subjects were asked questions such as: how many games the team had won the previous year (the answer was 17); How many wins will they get this season (the answer to the question was 18); and how many wins do you see for next season. Subjects then responded to four self-ratings of what they believed to be a) poor and exceptional, b) performing well above or below expectations, c) bad or good teams, and d) teams with little or great ability. Students were then asked how they believed the current team would finish the season (e.g., NCAA champion, Conf. winner, etc.) and asked to evaluate these possibilities. Wannand Dolan found that their hypothesis was right and that sports fans who had a greater affiliation with the team were more likely to fill the team's records. They found that students tended to think that the team had fared better in previous seasons and that their predictions for the present and future were greatly exaggerated. In a later article Wann explains that their assessment was not only true for teams with winning schedules, but also for teams that also had losing records. Wann performed this study to contradict a report by Hirt and Rials which differed in opinion from his original study and stated that it was a biased evaluation. In his second study, Wann found that the same effect occurred for die-hard fans of a losing team. They tended to do the same as other fans. Psychologists love to study the effects of certain things on people. not many have examined the effect of sports on fans. Although all people see things in different ways, some types of people, such as those spectators with a strong affiliation with a sports team, tend to have similar perspectives and biases about their performances.. "