My friends and I cheering on our basketball team at the Verizon Center for the Championships

My friend currently at San Diego State has been calling me to see how everything’s going and noted that her school “doesn’t feel like home” because no one has any school spirit and treats it strictly as school, a place to get work done. We both went to a high school that put a heavy emphasis on school traditions/spirit, which naturally made me want to come to one of the most spirited places in the world. For me, school spirit is addicting and I couldn’t imagine going to a school that didn’t care about what was going on outside the classroom. But has it been the key to success all along?

Varsity Brands did a study this September surveying “1,016 high school students, 315 parents of high school students and 150 high school principals across the United States” to ask about school spirit as individuals and as school administrators. Parents and students who noted personally (parents on behalf of their kid) that the students who had a lot of school spirit felt more connected to their school and student body, tended to do better academically, were more well-rounded, and intended to continue their educations to high school. Kids with school spirit tended to outweigh kids who did not have school spirit in these categories by a large percentage. For example, of these spirited students 91% felt more confident, 90% were more likely to be leaders, 88% were happier, 87% were more active in their communities, and 73% felt more fulfilled. However, this observational study does fall into an area whether it is hard to determine if it is enough subjects or not. With roughly 1350 parents and students weighing in on the survey, it might not be enough people. Also, parents speaking on behalf of their kids might not give an accurate representation, though this is less than half of the surveyed percentage. 

However, these are all great, but they seem like soft endpoints. What is actually connecting students to these things? How do we know that reverse causation isn’t causing this (the smarter/more outgoing/leadership kids want to get more involved anyway)?

I haven’t found any studies that show a direct connection between school spirit affecting the brain to cause these benefits such as grades, leadership, overall happiness, etc. I’ve looked into the impact of loyalty on the brain especially in terms of consumer/product relations (“Neuroscience of Member Loyalty” > How the Brain Works Toward Loyalty) and how religion impacts different areas of the brain (“The Brain During Religious Experiences”). One article even suggests these two components are combined to show that Apple fires the same areas of the brain as religious experiences, resulting in consumer loyalty (“Brain Hints…“). These are all loose links, but perhaps there is something in our brains that drives us to connect with our communities through finding familiar communities or stability. Customers can always turn to Apple, believers can always turn to their religion, and high schoolers can come together no matter what clique they hang out with in order to represent their school spirit. Again, these are loose connections, but connections I had to make on my own in order to come to some scientific conclusion outside of the study.

Personally, I will always be loyal to my high school and the teams and traditions I found there. I can even imagine myself sending my daughters to that small, all-girls school. It also clearly had an impact on my friend to the point where she is considering transferring to Penn State to find that spirit and community that defined our high school experience. Maybe it’s not too wild to say that this sense of loyalty that drives us to religion or brands can also drive us towards school spirit.