Abstract

The present study examined the hypothesis that people predict a longer duration of uniquely human secondary emotions for their ingroup than for an outgroup. A field experiment was conducted in the setting of the European Football Championship. Belgian participants were asked to predict the intensity with which their ingroup Belgian fans or the outgroup Turkish fans would experience various primary and secondary emotions in response to their team’s victory or loss immediately after the Turkey-Belgium match and three days later. The results support the hypothesis. Moreover, and as expected, no differences were found in the participants’ predictions of primary emotions. The implications of these findings for intergroup relations in general, and for football fans’ behavior in particular, are discussed.