The social group and its impact on subjective well-being, performance and the research process.

Humans are social beings and throughout their life they self-categorise as members of many social groups, be it a member of the community they live in, the company they work for, or the sports club they root for. Across three papers, this thesis examines the impact of the performance of such social groups on individuals’ subjective well-being and performance as well as the research process. The first paper investigates the effects of the performance of social groups on individuals’ subjective well-being. An analysis of five quantitative studies shows that a victory (defeat) of a social group positively (negatively) affects individuals’ subjective well-being. The strength of this effect varies depending on individuals’ attachment to the group and the importance of the event in question. Changes in individuals’ self-esteem and self-efficacy are identified as the underlying mechanisms driving the detected changes in individuals’ subjective well-being. The second paper examines the influence of social group performance on individuals’ performance in an unrelated task, contingent on their psychological resilience. Evidence from two natural field experiments indicates that high-resilience supporters of the losing group outperform their counterparts supporting the winning group. For low-resilience individuals this effect switches, with victors performing significantly better than losers. The third paper provides evidence that randomised laboratory experiments as a stand-alone method are unsuitable to assess effects around the performance of social groups. Results from a natural experiment and two randomised laboratory experiments suggest that it is important for researchers to consider the ecological validity of their experiments during the research design phase to ensure the real-world applicability of their findings. Overall, the findings of this thesis have wider implications for the management of organisations in general, and for marketing and communications managers in particular, on how to positively leverage work- and brand-related social identities.