Athens' failed bid for the Olympic Games: The role of ego‐involvement and affect on the collective self‐esteem of Greek‐Canadians

For Canadian‐born Greek‐Canadians, the failure of Athens' bid for the 1996 Olympic Summer Games was presumed to evoke social comparison at a group level. Although this process may influence social identity (collective self‐esteem), the effect was expected to be qualified by the subject's degree of involvement or self‐engagement with the event. Pre‐event (prior to the announcement of the awarding of the Games to Atlanta, U.S.A.) and post‐event responses were obtained from 63 female and 44 male Canadian‐born Greek‐Canadian university students. In a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses controlling for pre‐event collective self‐esteem, involvement and levels of post‐event positive emotions enhanced the prediction of post‐event collective self‐esteem on three subscales directly related to self. Low involvement subjects and those experiencing less post‐event positive emotion evidenced a decline in post‐event collective self‐esteem, whereas their high counterparts exhibited a relative stability in esteem scores. With a comparison group of 84 Canadian‐born Italian‐Canadian university students, for whom the outcome of the Olympic bid was irrelevant to their ethnic origin, involvement and affect were unrelated to post‐event collective self‐esteem. Results were interpreted as consistent with previous research linking group failure to increased group cohesion and involvement with stability in the attitude‐change literature.