One of the most interesting dynamics in youth sports is the interplay between the interests and motivations of parent, coaches and the young athlete to participate in youth sports programs.
There is a growing disconnect between the reasons for participation and the value received from participation that causes a natural and growing friction from each constituent in this "love-triangle" of sports.
Parents generally see participation as competition. There is a natural competition between the child and his peers, the child and himself and the parents themselves built into participation.
Kids generally see participation as an extension of their social network. Many are involves primarily because their friends are.
Coaches also see the games as competition and are stressed by attempting to balance their own need to win games versus the parents interest in their child's development and the child's need to develop athletically as well as socially.
This competition between the needs of each group provides much of the friction that comes between the groups as they interact with each other throughout the season. It sets up a circle of anger or frustration that can rapidly deteriorate into a vortex that sucks life out of a team and removes the joy of participation in the sport.
And as we can see by looking at the following column, if we are not continuously reminded to stay focused on the positive values and goals that come from participation, then it can be very easy to take the step over the line from good behavior to bad.
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From Pschology Today:
December 16, 2009, Evolutionary Psychology
The Morally Questionable Lessons of Formal Sports II: Moral Disengagement in the Drive to Win
How athletes justify cheating, lying, and deliberately hurting a person.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/200912/the-morally-questionable-lessons-formal-sports-ii-moral-disengagement-in-t
1) What is disturbing here is the the link between the length of time participated in sports and the moral justification of bad behavior.
2) Interesting as well that this behavioral process is no longer seen a gender-specific. It is no longer "boys will be boys". Apparently, the march to equality brings with it some unwanted baggage for the Title IX-ers.
Maria Kavussanu, at the University of Birmingham, in the UK, has for a number of years been studying sports morality. In one of her studies many college basketball, soccer, rugby, and field hockey players admitted (on anonymous questionnaires) to lying, cheating, and deliberately injuring others within the context of the game.[1] Interestingly, she also found that the longer a person had been playing formal sports, the more likely they were to say that such behaviors are justifiable. This relationship between time in sports and acceptance of transgressions applied to women as well as well as to men, though the former claimed less acceptance of such behaviors, overall, than did the latter.
There is some good news here as well. But this study demonstrates that the onus may belong on the coach, as the pack leader, to model and demonstrate the proper values.
Other researchers, studying youth football (soccer) in Norway, have found that the degree of acceptance of such behavioral transgressions depends on the "motivational climate" set by the coach.[2] If the coach emphasizes the importance of winning, then acceptance of morally questionable actions goes up; if the coach emphasizes the joys of the game, good sportsmanship, and the value of developing your own personal skills, then acceptance of such transgressions goes down.
This part of the article is fascinating as well in a very chilling and disturbing way. If you look at the reason cited for the concept of "moral disengagement" to justify unsportsmanlike behavior, they are eerily similar to the behavior slide cited by Dr. Philip Zimbardo in "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good people Turn Evil", Stanley Milgram's "Obedeince to Authority" and to a some extent Hannah Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil".
So the same psychological and situational issues that led to Holocaust, the Stanford Prison Experiment, the abuses at Abu-Gharab, etc. are at work to explain the prevalence of bad behavior in sports.
LOVELY!!!
In subsequent research, Kavussanu and her colleagues found that athletes used eight psychological means of moral disengagement to justify their transgressions, both to themselves and others.[3] Here they are, with my own examples to illustrate them:
• Moral justification (describing the transgression as morally right, not wrong). "I had to do it to protect my team's honor. We're not patsies."
• Euphemistic labeling (using language that disguises culpability). "I bent the rules a little," instead of "I broke the rules." Or, "I dusted him off," instead of, "I deliberately hit him with a pitched ball."
• Advantageous comparison (comparing your actions to others' worse actions, which make yours look good). "I hit him, but I didn't throw at his head, like others would have in this situation."
• Displacement of responsibility (claiming that your action was not your choice, but that of a higher authority). "It was the coach's decision; my job is to do what the coach asks."
• Diffusion of responsibility (attributing the action to the whole group rather than yourself personally). "It wasn't just me; the whole team charged the pitcher."
• Distortion of consequences (minimizing the damage done). "Hey, it's a small injury; he'll be back in no time."
• Dehumanization (speaking of the opposition in ways that deny their humanity). "They're a bunch of animals. When you play them you have to treat them that way."
• Attribution of blame (blaming the victim). "He started it with his trash talk." Or, "If he's got a weak ankle he shouldn't be playing."
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