Although sports are popular in North America, only a small research base examines the moral cultures of different sports. In this study, it was hypothesized that different sports have distinct moral cultures, that contact sports emphasize the care versus harm foundation from Moral Foundations Theory more than noncontact sports, and that contact sports emphasize morality more than noncontact sports in general. To investigate these questions, a corpus of transcribed athlete interviews was analyzed in accordance with the Moral Foundations Dictionary (MFD). A one-way ANOVA revealed that the seven sports examined (auto racing, baseball, basketball, football, golf, hockey, and tennis) significantly differed in their respective emphases on each of the moral foundations, as defined by the frequency of words from corresponding sections of the MFD used in that sport’s interviews relative to the total number of words in the interviews (care: F=108.1, sd=0.536; authority: F=46.63, sd=0.694; fairness: F=13.94, sd=0.314; purity: F=16.78, sd=0.240; ingroup: F=27.74, sd=0.492; p<0.001 for all foundations). T-tests were used to compare contact and noncontact sports’ relative frequencies of moral language use from the care category as well as their overall moral language use. The differences between contact and noncontact sports’ relative emphases on the care foundation, and morality in general, were both found to be significant (t=456.8, sd=0.1, p<0.001; t=5.718, sd=1.007, p=0.0168). These findings support the hypotheses that sports have distinct moral cultures, that contact sports emphasize the care foundation more than noncontact sports, and that contact sports emphasize morality more in general. These findings can guide future research on the effects that different sports have on their participants.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Psychology
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Sports
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Ethics
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_9457
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (49 pages : illustrations)
Note (type = degree)
M.A.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by John Daniel Pinsky
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Camden Graduate School Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10005600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
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