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Source: Basking in reflected glory

Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) is a self-serving cognition whereby an individual associates themselves with known successful others such that the winner's success becomes the individual's own accomplishment.
The affiliation of another's success is enough to stimulate self-glory. The individual does not need to be personally involved in the successful action. To BIRG, they must simply associate themselves with the success. Examples of BIRGing include anything from sharing a home state with a past or present famous person, to religious affiliations, to sports teams. For example, when a fan of a football team wears the team's jersey and boasts after a win, this fan is engaging in BIRGing. A parent with a bumper sticker reading "My child is an honor student" is basking in the reflected glory of their child. While many people have anecdotal accounts of BIRGing, social psychologists seek to find experimental investigations delving into BIRGing. Within social psychology, BIRGing is thought to enhance self-esteem and to be a component of self-management.
BIRGing has connections to social identity theory, which explains how self-esteem and self-evaluation can be enhanced by the identification with another person's success through basking in reflected glory that is not earned. Social identity is the individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership of social groups. High self-esteem is typically a perception of oneself as attractive, competent, likeable, and a morally good person. The perception of having these attributes makes the person feel as if they are more attractive to the outside social world and thus more desirable to others.
BIRGing is a widespread and important impression management technique to counter any threats to self-esteem and to maintain positive relations with others. Some positive effects of BIRGing include increasing individual self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment. It can show pride of self, and pride for the other person's success, which in turn boosts one's own self-esteem. BIRGing can be negative when done over-extensively where the individual engaging in BIRGing becomes delusional or forgets the reality that they did not actually accomplish the successful event.
A related concept is cutting off reflected failure (CORFing). This is the idea that people tend to disassociate themselves from lower-status individuals because they do not want their reputations affected by associating with the people who are considered failures.