There is a concept out there on human behavior called Social Cognition, which is an offshoot of Cognitive Psychology. Essentially, it states that there are several programmed responses in our noggins to any and all external stimuli. We get these programmed responses, called schemas, by learning from and modeling those around us. Our various schemas are activated by external forces, and activated without our knowledge; they are programmed responses.
Essentially, there are two ways in which we subconsciously decide to activate a particular schema. They are salience and priming. Salience refers to the way in which the stimulus activating the schema stands out relative to other stimuli. For example, lets say you're at a tailgate at Ross-Ade with a bunch of your buddies. You're all wearing your Kyle Orton and Drew Brees jerseys, along with your Joe Tiller Custom Mustaches. Football is in the air. A lone man in an Indiana jersey joins your tailgate. Well, that just activated your "Indiana" schema, which also activated your "hostility" and "dislike" schemas. These schemas are grouped together because that's how you, a Purdue fan, have organized them. Obviously, an IU fan would have his "Indiana" schema clustered around different schemas such as "fun" "love" and "why the hell did I buy an IU football jersey." Your "Indiana" stimuli didn't just get activated out of the blue; it was activated because it just became very, very important to your immediate social surroundings. It became "salient."
Priming refers to the experiences immediately preceding the schema activation. Using the same example as above, that man in the IU jersey is presumably primed for a fight, being that he's at an away game, and the sort of guy to approach a hostile team's tailgate. Ever wonder why you can't fall asleep after watching an episode of Ghost Hunters? It's because the experience of Ghost Hunters has primed your "fear" schema. Completely ordinary noises and shadows are now interpreted as threats as a result.
So what does this have to do with football? Nothing. But it does shed some light on how we act and interact as fans. Each of us have our own schemas set up relating to our own preference in teams. My "Purdue" schema, and relative network of associated schemas, is wildly different from Joe Boilermaker's. Here's where things get interesting: Social Cognition is mostly concerned with the way new information is processed within preexisting schemas.
Why we feel the way we feel.
College Football fans are fun to study under these parameters, mostly because they make it so damn easy. Let's take the biggest bit of "new information" to come into the Big Ten this year: Rich Rodriguez. While most of us probably had a "Rich Rodriguez" (RR) schema set up, it was probably never salient or primed, so it was probably not used much. However, with RR taking over Michigan, we now have to assimilate that schema into a much more salient and much better primed "Michigan" schema. All of the sudden, RR is relevant in our Big Ten obsessed lives.
How you assimilate this new schema is largely dependent on how you've classified "Michigan." For an OSU fan, Rich automatically got thrown into the "bad" schema. For a UM fan, Rich got thrown into the "good" schema. This is, of course, simplified horrifically; in reality each individual's "RR" schema falls somewhere on a spectrum between good and bad.
As RR's schema becomes more primed and salient, people's minds will naturally pay more attention to new information regarding that schema. How we process that information, however, is largely dependent on how we've classified RR's schema. Confirmation Bias states that people will attend to the information that confirms their pre-existing schema, and ignore information that casts that schema into doubt. In action, confirmation bias looks like this, regarding the recent payout to WVU:
from an OSU message board:
"I laugh, Now you are forced to focus on the results of the season. I do believe you will be hoping to find distractions the next couple of years. This really provides another good opportunity to question the character and competence of DickRod. He drug the school and scUM football program through 7 months of this then ended up "settling" for the buy-out originally negotiated in his contract? I suppose he will claim victory in this. Hail to the Victors!"
Add in the requisite sarcastic smiley's, and you get the picture. Compare this with an unrelated response from a UM message board:
"7 months too long? Apparently you all aren't familair with the judicial system. It can take years for a case to go to trial. Honestly, it wouldn't have bothered me a bit if this thing took a couple of years. It truely don't think it would have been a distraction. Either way at the end of the day RR either was gonna pay it or get off. I think the longer this thing would have dragged on the more we would have learned about how corrupt WVU is and they would have looked worse in the court of public opinion more so than RR."
To an OSU fan, RR is a classless fool who not only got what was coming financially, but also sucks as a coach and will fail miserably. The new information was assimilated as such because of the pre-existing schema in which RR was categorized. RR = Bad, so only the "bad" new information was taken in. It also activated a whole other set of schemas related to RR, such as his moral character and coaching skills. Likewise, the Michigan fan's response came as a result of his own RR schema. RR = Good, thus, the new info was couched in a most positive way. Both sides took the new information, in this case the buyout ruling, and assimilated it according to their own confirmation bias.
There are two cliche's that have their roots in confirmation bias. They are "You'll hear what you want to hear" and "You'll believe what you want to believe." There are reasons cliche's exist; it is because they are true. If you already contemn a team, coach, or person, then any new information about that object will be parsed into positives and negatives, with the positives thrown out, and the negatives kept.
Why we act the way we act
There is another side of Social Cognition, and that is how activated schemas are either suppressed or enforced given the social situation. A pretty girl may activate a certain schema in your head, but for most of us, social constrictions and upbringing prevent us from grabbing said girl's ass. Mostly, it is because we know that if we do that, we will go to jail. Our social limitations on activated schemas are so ingrained that it is almost subconscious.
So what happens when we take away those social limitations? Message boards are a good place to start. Message boards are the home of anonymous insults; a place where there are very different social rules; and a place of little to no consequences for our actions. That's why you get trolls and e-thugs saying things they'd never say to your face at, say, a Purdue tail gait. It's why they are so full of vitriol. It's why blogs exist. It's the exact point that Buzz Bissinger was trying to make a few months ago. Activated schemas are not held accountable here on the interwebs, and it's up to blogs and message boarders to police themselves.
There's another way that social limitations are taken away that has nothing to do with anonymity. Alcohol. Wonder why it's easier to talk to girls when you're drunk (nevermind that you're still no good at it)? It's because your brain isn't limiting your activated schema to conform to anything, let alone social limitations. Wonder why something like this happens?
Normally, I'd wager that the social limitations of the situation (i.e. I'm not going to hurt another human being over collegiate allegiance) would prevent these fans from throwing with the intent to hurt. Add in alcohol and it all goes to shit. Their activated "hatred" schema has overpowered its limitations. Of course, extreme stupidity comes into play as well, as well as a host of other factors.
So, next time you're strolling along the internet message boards, talking with another fan, or simply assimilating some new bit of information about your favorite (or least favorite) team, keep in mind the process by which your brain is categorizing things. You may be surprised that by knowing the process, you learn more information. Idiots simply rely on existing schemas and add in information that agrees with them, and disregard information that doesn't. You are not an idiot. You are now informed.
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