Recent sport psychology research addressing athletic aggression has tended to focus either on the moral or the motivational dimensions of aggressive behavior. The current study utilized both moral and motivational constructs to investigate aggression in young soccer participants (N = 212) from two different age-group leagues: under 12 and under 14. Stepwise multiple regression analyses revealed that players who described themselves as more likely to aggress against an opponent also were more likely to (a) identify a larger number of teammates who would aggress in a similar situation, (b) perceive their coach as placing greater importance on ego-oriented goals, and (c) choose situations featuring preconventional rather than conventional moral motives as more tempting for aggressive action. These results suggest that young athletes’ aggressive behavior is related to their team’s “moral atmosphere,” including team aggressive norms, players’ perceptions of these team norms and coach characteristics, and players’ moral motives for behavior.

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The relationships between sport involvement variables (participation and interest) and facets of children's morality (reasoning maturity and aggression tendencies) were investigated for 106 girls and boys in grades 4 through 7. Children responded to a sport involvement questionnaire, participated in a moral interview, and completed two self-report instruments designed to assess aggression tendencies in sport-specific and daily life contexts. Analyses revealed that boys' participation and interest in high contact sports and girls' participation in medium contact sports (the highest level of contact sport experience they reported) were positively correlated with less mature moral reasoning and greater tendencies to aggress. Regression analyses demonstrated that sport interest predicted reasoning maturity and aggression tendencies better than sport participation. Results and implications are discussed from a structural developmental perspective.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between children's moral reasoning and their assertive, aggressive, and submissive action tendencies in sport and daily life contexts. The 106 fourth- through seventh-grade children were asked to reason about hypothetical sport and daily life moral dilemmas and to respond to two behaviorally validated, self-report instruments designed to assess action tendencies in sport and daily life conflict situations. Multiple regression analyses indicated that moral reasoning scores were predictive of action tendencies, with reasoning positively related to assertion and negatively related to aggression. Results were interpreted in light of a congruence between Haan's (1978) descriptions of moral levels and the moral implications of the action tendencies under consideration. Gender and school-level differences in action tendencies were also noted; no gender or school-level differences in moral reasoning were found.

A structural-developmental approach was employed in the present study to investigate athletes' moral cognitions about intentionally injurious sport acts. Analyses were based on interviews with 40 female and male high school and college basketball players. Subjects reasoned about general life and sport-specific moral dilemmas and made judgments in hypothetical and engaged contexts about the legitimacy of sport behaviors presented in the Continuum of Injurious Acts (CIA). Athletes' moral reasoning levels were inversely related to the number of CIA acts they perceived as legitimate; this reasoning-judgment relationship was particularly strong for sport reasoning and judgments made in the hypothetical context. Also, differences in the perceived legitimacy of CIA acts occurred in hypothetical and engaged contexts and as a function of sex and, in the engaged condition, school level. Results were discussed in light of athletes' coordination of moral reasoning and decision-making about intentionally injurious sport acts.