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Many fans feel angry at Coach Pete because such feelings are hard-wired

No matter the player or coach, it's amazing how quickly some fans' views can change once a player or coach decides to leave one organization for another. One minute, he's "the best thing to happen to our city", who "helped build our foundation" and a "wonderful man serves as a solid role model for our community". The next minute, he's "a traitor" who "rode the coattails of someone else" and someone "with no moral compass".

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It seems no matter what a coach / player does or doesn't do when he decides to leave a team, many fans will feel rejected and express feelings of anger. In fact, the more successful he is to the organization, the more intense the reactions can be.

But why? The answers may lie deep within our human psyche. There is an amazing amount of research re: The Psychology of Rejection. Interestingly, the close bonds fans form with their teams --- the intense feelings of "inclusion" --- create the perfect storm for such strong emotional responses whenever coaches or players leave a team by their own volition.

"Ten Surprising Facts about Rejection" - Psychology Today
  • Rejection hurts (neurologically speaking). fMRI studies show that the same areas of the brain become activated when we experience rejection as when we experience physical pain.
  • Rejection destabilizes our ‘Need to Belong’. We all have a fundamental need to belong to a group (or tribe).Our brain prioritizes rejection experiences because we are social animals who live in ‘tribes’.

  • Rejection creates surges of anger and aggression. In 2001, the Surgeon General of the U.S. issued a report that stated rejection is a greater risk for adolescent violence than drugs, poverty, or gang membership. Countless studies have demonstrated that even mild rejections lead people to take out their aggression on ‘innocent’ bystanders. School shootings, violence against women, and fired postal workers going...postal, are other examples of the strong link between rejection and aggression.
  • Rejection is re-experienced vividly. Try recalling an experience in which you felt significant physical pain and your brain pathways will go, ‘meh’. But try reliving a painful rejection, and you will be flooded with many of the same feelings you had at the time (and your brain will respond much as it did at the time too).

  • Rejection temporarily lowers our IQ. Being asked to recall a recent rejection experience and relive the experience was enough for people to score significantly lower on subsequent IQ tests, tests of short-term memory, and tests of decision making. Indeed, when we are reeling from a painful rejection, thinking clearly is not that easy.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201307/ten-surprising-facts-about-rejection

This content was not created by OBNUG and therefore may not meet our standards. On the contrary, it probably exceeds them.

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