Toward an understanding of transgressive behavior in sport: progress and prospects

TL;DR: In this article, the authors reviewed research investigating athletes' transgressive behavior in the last ten years and focused on behaviors that have adverse interpersonal consequences or violate the ideal of fair play, such as aggression, cheating, doping, and antisocial behavior toward opponents and teammates.

About: This article is published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise.The article was published on 2019-05-01 and is currently open access. It has received 26 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Moral disengagement & Cheating.

Summary

Take down policy

• Sport has been heralded as building character for centuries, yet few would argue that negative social behaviours, with adverse consequences for others, are also common in sport.
• Aggression refers to overt behavior (verbal or physical) that is purposeful (i.e., nonaccidental), chosen with the intent of causing injury, and has the capacity to cause psychological or physical injury to another (Husman & Silva, 1984) .
• A cheating behavior widely investigated in recent years (see Ntoumanis, Ng, Barkoukis, & Backhouse, 2014) is doping, which refers to the use of banned substances or methods to enhance sport performance.

M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT

• Transgressive behaviour 3 when researchers have measured a specific form of transgressive behavior 1 (i.e., aggression, cheating, doping, antisocial behavior toward teammates and opponents) the precise term referring to the specific transgressive behavior is used.
• Given the amount of research on transgressive behaviour in sport, this review is not exhaustive.
• Variation in pre-game need-thwarting coaching behavior was positively linked to variation in objectifying stance (viewing others as objects), which was in turn positively related to variation in antisocial behavior towards opponents and teammates.
• Ethical leadership could shape athletes' moral decision making and subsequent behavior, in line with the findings of a recent study that ethical leaders reduced employees' deviant behavior via a reduction on their propensity to morally disengage (Moore et al., 2019) .
• The authors also need more qualitative studies to help us better understand the moral dimensions of the sport experience from the perspective of the participants.

Proximal Predictors of Transgressive Behaviour

• Researchers have proposed a variety of models in their effort to understand transgressive behavior in sport (e.g., Hodge & Gucciardi, 2015; Kavussanu & Ring, 2017; Lazuras, Barkoukis, & Tsorbatzoudis, 2015) .
• These models incorporate explanatory variables or proximal predictors of transgressive behavior, which are assumed to "carry" or explain the effects of more distal personal and social antecedents on behavior.
• The two most reliable proximal predictors of transgressive behavior in sport, discussed in this section, are anticipated guilt and moral disengagement.
• These are hypothesized to act in opposite ways, by decreasing and increasing transgressive behavior, respectively; they are also inversely associated with each other.

Transgressive behaviour 4

• Guilt is a self-conscious moral emotion arising from moral transgressions and is a key regulator of moral action (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007) .
• Anticipated regret from using banned substances emerged as a strong negative predictor of doping intentions in several studies of Greek elite athletes recruited from a variety of individual and team sports (Lazuras, Barkoukis, Mallia, Lucidi, & Brand, 2017; Lazuras, Barkoukis, & Tsorbatzoudis, 2015) .
• The second proximal predictor of transgressive behavior in sport is moral disengagement, which refers to eight psychological mechanisms, assumed to reduce the guilt and other negative emotions that inhibit transgressive behavior, thereby facilitating such behavior (Bandura, 1991) .
• In all studies, moral disengagement had additional direct positive effects on transgressive behaviour, suggesting that this variable may regulate transgressive behaviour via other mechanisms besides anticipated guilt, and is itself a proximal predictor of transgressive behavior.
• Some of this research is discussed in the next section.

Personal Variables as Distal Predictors of Transgressive Behavior in Sport

• A great deal of research has attempted to identify factors that facilitate or inhibit transgressive behaviour in sport.
• The focus of this section is on those variables that have evidenced the strongest and most consistent associations with this behaviour, and those that have received attention in recent research.

Positive Predictors of Transgressive Behaviour

• Sport is an achievement context, and individuals take part in sport in order to achieve, thus, competence in this context is important.
• Athletes with controlled motivation would focus on the outcome of the game or race, and they are more likely to engage in transgressive behaviors to achieve their extrinsic goals.
• Jones et al (2017) found that narcissism was positively associated with antisocial sport behavior.
• Fear of failure is the motive to avoid failure in achievement contexts.
• Passion is a strong inclination toward an activity that one likes, finds important, and in which one invests a significant amount of time and energy (Vallerand et al., 2003) .

Negative Predictors of Transgressive Behaviour

• Another line of research has focused on identifying factors that inhibit transgressive behaviour.
• The extent to which the moral self-schema is experienced as being central to one's self-definition has been referred to as the internalization dimension of moral identity (Aquino & Reed, 2002) with a hypothetical situation, where they had the opportunity to act aggressively (i.e., foul play).
• They are moderated (in men) by provocation.
• In both men and women, at low provocation, this effect was evident only in women at high provocation.
• In a study of French elite athletes, it was a positive predictor of resistive self-regulatory efficacy (i.e., the ability to resist social pressure to use banned substances), which in turn negatively predicted doping intentions indirectly via moral disengagement (Corrion et al., 2017) .

The Social Environment

• Transgressive behaviour takes place in a social context, and this context can have a profound influence on that behaviour.
• Coaches and teammates are the most significant individuals within the athletes' social environment.
• In addition, the wider social environment, consisting of significant others' behaviours also plays an important role on athletes' behaviour.
• The context has "motivational" and "moral" features.
• These features are discussed in this section.

Transgressive behaviour 13

• One motivational feature of the sport context is the motivational climate, which involves the criteria of success communicated to athletes by significant others such as coaches; these individuals determine the evaluation procedures and distribution of rewards, and, via their behaviour, convey to the athletes what is valued in that context (Ames, 1992) .
• Coaches can create a performance motivational climate -where normative ability is valued -by rewarding only the top athletes and giving primarily normative feedback, or a mastery climate -where personal progress is valued -by rewarding individual effort and improvement and creating opportunities for everyone to succeed.
• Several studies have shown that when athletes perceive a performance motivational climate in their team, they tend to report more frequent antisocial behaviour (e.g., Boardley & Kavussanu, 2009; Stanger et al., 2018; van de Pol, Kavussanu, & Claessens, 2018) , whereas mastery climate has been inversely -and less strongly -associated with this behaviour (Boardley & Kavussanu, 2009) .
• This is a construct derived from self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985) , which has distinguished between controlling and autonomy-supportive interpersonal coaching styles, that are evident in coach behaviour.
• In a controlling climate, coaches use coercive practices and pressure participants, for example, by using controlling language and extrinsic rewards for performance.

Moral Features

• The sport context also has "moral" features, manifested via the coach and athlete behaviour.
• Acting in an ethical manner is often in conflict with winning.
• The concept of moral atmosphere was first described by Kohlberg and his associates (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989) , who investigated the influence of group norms on moral reasoning and behavior of the group members in school and prison environments.
• In another study, athletes who perceived that their teammates engaged in antisocial behaviours toward one another during practices, also reported antisocial behaviour toward their teammates (Benson, Bruner, & Eys, 2017) .
• Thus, there is consistent link between perceptions that significant others would approve doping and reported intention to use banned substances.

Key Issues and Future Research Directions

• As the literature reviewed in the previous sections indicates, much progress has been made in their understanding of transgressive behaviour in sport in the last ten years.
• More research is needed, building upon the original work of Lee and colleagues, to better understand the different types of antisocial behavior, as well as their antecedents and consequences.
• Support for this argument comes from a three-wave study of academic cheating and moral disengagement (Fida et al., 2016) .
• This suggests that doping is viewed by athletes as a more serious transgressive behaviour that is not equivalent to antisocial behaviour toward teammates and opponents.

Conclusion

• In conclusion, athletes from different sport types, competitive levels, and nationalities engage in transgressive behaviour, which is manifested in various ways, including aggression and cheating.
• Certain personality characteristics (e.g., ego orientation, controlled motivation, narcissism) are likely to facilitate transgressive behavior, whereas others (e.g., moral identity, empathy, regulatory self-efficacy) are likely to inhibit such behaviour.
• In addition, a social or team environment that puts emphasis on winning, is controlling, and explicitly promotes.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

The concept of fair dealing under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ( CCDPA ) was introduced in this paper. 

Q2. What is the role of motivation in sport?

Antisocial and prosocial behaviour in sport: the role of 3 motivational climate, basic psychological needs, and moral disengagement. 

Q3. What are some of the main characteristics of transgressive behaviour in sport?

Several types of transgressive behaviour take place in sport including antisocial behaviourtoward teammates and opponents, aggression, cheating and doping.• 

Q4. What is the common type of behaviour in sport?

A team environment that emphasizes winning at all costs, is controlling, and explicitlypromotes antisocial behaviour could result in more frequent antisocial behaviour. 

Q5. What are the common predictors of transgressive behaviour?

Anticipated guilt and moral disengagement are the most commonly examined predictors,and they have opposite effects on transgressive behaviour.• 

Q6. What are the main characteristics of transgressive sport behaviour?

Certain personality characteristics have been linked to transgressive sport behaviour withsome likely to facilitate (ego orientation, controlled motivation, narcissism) and others likely to inhibit (moral identity, empathy, regulatory self-efficacy) such behaviour.