According to the Team Identification—Social Psychological Health Model (Wann, 2006b), team identification and social psychological health should be positively correlated because identification leads to important social connections which, in turn, facilitate well-being. Although past research substantiates the hypothesized positive relationship between team identification and well-being, earlier studies focused solely on college student populations. The current study extended past work in this area by investigating the team identification/well-being relationship among older sport fans. A sample of older adults (N = 96; M age = 70.82) completed scales assessing demographics, identification with a local college basketball team, and measures of social psychological well-being. As hypothesized, team identification accounted for a significant proportion of unique variance in two measures of social psychological health (collective self-esteem and loneliness).
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