Professor Has Article Published in Psychology Journal

Dr. Paul C Bernhardt, an associate professor of Psychology at Frostburg State University, has recently had another study published in the North American Journal of Psychology. In his most recent article, Dr. Bernhardt is interested in the trends concerning the societal impact of, in basic terms, winning and losing. This study focused on political yard signs and the tendency of the homeowners to display the signs of the winning party or take down the signs which support the loser. It deals with the most recent presidential election race between current President Barack Obama and his opponent, Mitt Romney.

Dr. Bernhardt’s theory, so suitably named, is called “Resolving Divergent Findings on Basking in Reflected Glory with Political Yard Signs” and deals with public interest and how it appeals to an individual’s self-esteem. “The basic idea is that a person, or persons, bases their self-esteem on their association with other people and how they feel other people judge them. Social psychologists view self-esteem as not being something that is an internal ‘good or bad’ about ourselves, but really as being an assessment of ‘how everyone thinks of me’… it can explain an awful a lot about people’s behavior”, says Dr. Berhardt.

Dr. Bernhardt related this to a study in the 70’s about sports fans. On Monday morning, more university students were observed in sporting team merchandise after a football game had been won that past weekend. Conversely, fewer students were likely to wear their jerseys or team merchandise if said team had lost. According to Dr. Bernhard, this tendency says, “I am moderating my behavior because I know that people will pay attention to this—I want people to know- ‘I’m with the winner’….we distance ourselves from the loser.”

Presidential elections are not the only instance of this trend, but are more high-profile and therefore of higher interest and awareness—“for example,” he asked, “do you know who won the most recent State Attorney’s race? What about who won the presidential election?” Only with attractive events do we find major indicators of public interest—and the findings, though obvious, were supportive of his theory. After the election and Obama’s victory, 40.5% of supporters still displayed the yard signs; only 23.6% of Mitt Romney’s supporters kept the signs up. This staggering difference supports his theory: people love to bask in the victories of others.

Social media is obviously a conduit for his theory of public interest. He related this to the 2013 Superbowl and the study he conducted with a former student, Theresa Leasure (now a graduate student at Radford University). Before and during the Superbowl, the 49ers and Ravens’ Facebook pages experienced a spike in the rate of “likes”. Dr. Bernhardt explained the importance of this trend, “We try to adjust how we think others view us by engaging in certain kinds of behavior: our dress, our social interactions, our way of presenting ourselves, who we choose to associate with. All of those things appear to be supporting this notion of moderating our self-esteem; improving self esteem is based on finding ways to associate ourselves with people [who] we know others are going to think well of, things we know others are going to think well of.”