BIRGing and CORFing

Cialdini is known for his astute observations of sports fans that could be correlated with video gamers’ and their transformations in personalities and egos. He noticed that as people played games they liked, they began to identify with the avatars that they controlled. These individuals often changed their appearance, the way they spoke, and the way they acted depending on success or failure. Using sports teams and their fans as the objects of study, Cialdini was able to connect a relationship between individuals’ appearances to the public world, with their virtual reality.

BIRGing and CORFing

Throughout his theory he came up with the concepts BIRGing and CORFing. BIRG stands for Basking In Reflected Glory, and simple enough that would mean that when something goes well for a sports team that a fan would reflect himself with the team as one(1). For an example I am a HUGE Phoenix Suns fan and now when they are doing really well deep in the Playoffs I like to say that WE are playing well. Even though I am not a part of the Phoenix Suns, I am just a fan. So the theory says that when things go well for a team that you idolize the person likes to reflect themselves in the glory of the team so they feel better about themselves.

CORFing on the other hand would be the opposite. CORF stands for Cutting Off Reflected Failure. And what you do with CORFing is that instead of put yourself together with a team that is doing well. You set yourself apart from a team that is doing bad. So if you are a Boston Red Sox fan and they have been playing well for the last three years and now early in the season they are struggling. You don’t say that “we” are playing bad, you use “they” and say that “they” are not playing well. (Sorry Dr. Downs, haha)

Personaly I hate when people use BIRGing, because most of the time they have not don anything to help that team and most of the time I feel like they just use it so they feel good about themselves. So when people say that I usually say some smart comment and ask them what number they have on the team and I usually get a blank stare in response.