Moral Disengagement and Aggression in Fight Sport Athletes

Abstract

The goal of this study is to investigate the moral disengagement and aggression levels of fight sport athletes according to several independent variables and reveal the relationship among them. The study group consisted of totally 207 fight sport athletes, 88 females and 119 males with age = 21,99 ± 4,92 and year of sport = 6,14 ± 5,42. “The Scale of Moral Disengagement in Sport” and “The Questionnaire of Buss-Perry Aggression” were used as data collection tools. Descriptive statistics, t test, ANOVA and Pearson Correlation analysis were used in the analysis of data. While the mean of physical aggression of athletes was found as the highest, verbal aggression had the lowest mean value within the sub-dimensions of aggression, and they stated that they somewhat disagreed with the moral disengagement. It was found that there was a moderate positive significant correlation between moral disengagement and sub-dimensions of anger, hostility, physical and verbal aggressions of aggression scale. Significant difference was observed in the dimension of moral disengagement in accordance with age and year of sport. Physical and verbal aggression scores of males are significantly higher according to gender. The aggression and moral disengagement scores of kickboxers are significantly higher than those of taekwondo athletes in line with the branch. To conclude, it was determined that fight sport athletes did not approve moral disengagement in sport, however, the case of moral disengagement of athletes, who were younger and started the sport recently, was higher and they mostly showed the behaviour of aggression physically.

Moral Disengagement in Youth Athletes: A Narrative Review

“…Deceptive actions associated with athletes’ manipulation of the rules of the sports contest were justified to a larger extent by athletes with more experience in sports and by younger athletes. Regarding aggression, youth playing contact sports tended to report higher levels of moral disengagement than athletes in non-contact sports and a higher perception of legitimacy of aggressive behaviour in competition [ 74 ]. The study also confirmed the existence of age differences in moral disengagement, where younger athletes (17–18 years) tended to report higher levels than older athletes.…”