JOURNAL OF SPORT PSYCHOLOGY, 1986, 8, 304-318

The Relationship of Sport Involvement With Children's Moral Reasoning

and Aggression Tendencies

Brenda Jo Bredemeier Maureen R. Weiss University of California-Berkeley University of Oregon

David L. Shields Bruce A.B. Cooper University of California-Berkeley University of California-

San Francisco

The relationships between sport involvement variables (participation and in- terest) 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 as- sess 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 ex- perience 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 struc- tural developmental perspective.

Children are participating in sports in increasing numbers. In spite of the popularity of youth sport programs, social scientists have been slow to inves- tigate the relationship between sport involvement and moral development. This study was designed to explore the relationship of sport involvement with chil- dren's moral reasoning maturity and with their tendencies to aggress.

There is limited evidence that youth sport participation may be negatively related to mature moral reasoning. Romance (1984) found a low negative corre-

David Shields is a Visiting Research Fellow with the Department of Physical Educa- tion, University of California, Berkeley. Bruce Cooper is a Visiting Postdoctoral Research Psychologist at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Brenda Jo Bredemeier, 200 Hearst Gym- nasium, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.

Sport and Children's Moral Reasoning 1 305

lation between length of youth sport participation and 5th grade children's moral reasoning maturity about hypothetical sport dilemmas. This finding is consistent with studies in which high school and college basketball players were found to reason at a significantly lower moral level than nonathletes (Bredemeier & Shields, 1984a, 1984b, 1986a; Hall, 1981). There is also evidence, however, that sport participation may be positively related to moral growth. Horrocks (1979), in a study of 5th and 6th grade children, found a positive correlation between sport involvement and reasoning about a hypothetical sport dilemma. Finally, Bredemei- er, Weiss, Shields, and Shewchuk (in press) found that sport experiences deliber- ately designed to promote growth in moral reasoning can be efficacious.

The relationship between sport involvement and various dimensions of moral behavior has occasionally been investigated. Athletic aggression has been the fo- cus of several of these studies. Nelson, Gelfand, and Hartman (1969) conducted a laboratory experiment with 5- and 6-year-old children who observed either an aggressive or a nonaggressive model and then participated in a competitive game with experimentally controlled outcomes. It was found that competition increased aggression even above levels expected from modeling alone. In a second experi- ment, Christy, Gelfand, and Hartman (1971) found that competition increased aggression only for those children who also observed an aggressive model. These laboratory findings are consistent with several field studies in which aggression was observed to increase in conjunction with participation in competitive games or sports (Rausch, 1965; Rausch, Dittman, & Taylor, 1959; Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961; Sherif & Sherif, 1953).

Children's aggression tendencies may also be related to their observation of high contact sports. In a study of 604 young male ice hockey competitors, Smith (1978) found that more than one third of the boys had learned and used illegal hits by watching professional hockey. Similarly, Mugno and Feltz (1984) found that youth league and high school male football players learned aggressive sport acts by observing college and professional football.

Special interest in particular athletes also may be related to young sport participants' aggression tendencies. Smith's (1974) interviews with 83 Toronto male high school ice hockey players revealed that those who perceived their favorite NHL athlete as "rough and tough" exhibited higher levels of athletic aggression than players whose favorite performers were perceived as less ag- gressive. In contrast, Russell (1979) found that among 205 male amateur ice hock- ey competitors in the 1975 Canada Winter Games, those displaying higher levels of physical and/or nonphysical aggression were not any more likely to select as heroes NHL players and teams having high penalty totals than were less aggres- sive Games competitors.

Several limitations are characteristic of this literature on the moral aspects of youth sport involvement. Investigators often have confined their analyses to a single sport or have indiscriminately lumped all sports together into a single index of sport participation. Since each sport is characterized by a particular com- plex of relationships and roles that may have differing impact on the participants, it is unsound to generalize from one type of sport experience to another. Thus, for example, a noncontact sport like swimming may have substantially different implications for moral reasoning or tendencies to aggress than a high contact sport like football.

306 / Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, and Cooper

Another limitation characteristic of the aggression literature is that sport and daily life contexts seldom have been studied in conjunction with one another (Bredemeier & Shields. 1986b). Thus, it is difficult to determine whether chil- dren who are aggressive in sport will be correspondingly high in their everyday aggression tendencies. Similarly, if a factor is reported to be associated with in- creased sport aggressiveness, we do not know whether it also will be associated with greater aggressiveness in everyday life.

This study was designed to investigate the relationship of children's par- ticipation and interest in low, medium, and high contact sports with their moral reasoning maturity and tendencies to aggress both in sport and everyday life.

Method

This investigation was conducted at a summer sports camp sponsored by a major university in the northwestern region of the United States. The annual camp program is designed to facilitate development of participants' physical perfor- mance, sports knowledge, and social skills; at the same time it provides a unique laboratory for the study of participants' motor and psychosocial development.

Subjects The subjects were 106 camp participants who were in grades 4 through 7.

Although a total of 117 children were enrolled in these classes, only 106 responded to all measures used in the present investigation. Also, the sample size for some analyses varied because some children did not respond to every question in the Sport Involvement Questionnaire; deviations from the sample of 106 are noted where relevant.

The mean chronological age of the 16 female and 23 male 4th graders was 10.1 years; the 15 female and 26 male 5th graders averaged 1 1.2 years, and 12.5 years was the mean age for the 11 female and 15 male 6th17th graders. Study participants were primarily Caucasian and represented predominantly middle and upper-middle socioeconomic classes of the community.

Procedures

The primary investigator described the nature and purpose of the study to camp participants whose parents had granted permission for their involvement. Only one child, a 4th grade girl, chose not to participate in the study. The chil- dren's moral development was assessed by means of 45-minute individual inter- views conducted during the first 3 weeks of camp. During the 4th week, sport involvement and aggression data were collected via three brief pencil-and-paper measures. These were administered to children in a classroom setting, in groups broken down by sex and grade level. It took approximately 40 minutes to com- plete the test battery.

Assessment

Sport Involvement. The Sport Involvement Questionnaire (SIQ) provided information on sport participation and interest. In the first section of the SIQ, children are asked to list each of the organized sport teams on which they have participated and to indicate the number of seasons they participated in each sport.

Sport and Children's Moral Reasoning / 307

In the second section, children are asked to name their favorite athlete and which sport they most enjoy watching.

Each sport listed by SIQ respondents was coded as being included in one of three categories, depending upon the relative frequency and intensity of physical contact associated with it. Low contact sports included baseballlsoftball, gym- nastics, swimming, tennis, and track; medium contact sports included basketball and soccer; high contact sports included football, judo, and wrestling. For the first section of the questionnaire, the number of seasons that children participat- ed in each category of sport was recorded. If a child listed 1 season of swim- ming, 3 seasons of basketball, and 2 seasons of football, for example, he or she would receive scores of 1, 3, and 2 for low, medium, and high contact sports, respectively.

Responses to the second section of the SIQ were simply assigned to one of the three sport categories and given a score of 1,2, or 3, corresponding to low, medium, and high contact. For example, a child who identified Martina Navratilo- va as his favorite athlete received a " 1 " on that item because Navratilova partici- pates in the low contact sport of tennis. Similarly, if a child said she most enjoyed watching the game of football, a score of "3" was assigned to that response.

Moral Development. The moral interview consisted of four hypothetical moral dilemmas, two set in sport contexts and two reflecting everyday situations. The dilemmas were designed to provide continuity of moral issues across the two different contexts and to reflect experiences common to the children. One sport and one life dilemma featured a girl forced to choose between honesty and keep- ing a promise to a girlfriend. The second set of sport and life stories featured boys faced with a decision about whether to risk hurting another boy physically to prevent him from continuing an unfair activity. Interviewers altered the se- quence of presentations so that the relative position of each of the four interview stories was varied systematically. Sport and life stories were always alternated.

The research associates who interviewed subjects and scored protocols had previously completed a training program on Haan's (1977, 1978) interac- tional model of moral development. Haan's model consists of a five-level charac- terization of an individual's ability to engage in differentiated dialogical processes to achieve intersubjective "moral balances" concerning respective rights and ob- ligations. Development moves from an assimilative orientation (Levels 1 and 2) in which moral balances are egocentrically constructed, through an accommoda- tive orientation (Levels 3 and 4) whereby self-interest is subordinated to others' interest, until equilibration is reached at Level 5.

Children's interview responses were recorded in writing and on audiotape. Each protocol was scored independently by two raters; raters did not score pro- tocols of children they interviewed. Each rater assigned a major and minor score to each story, reflecting predominant and secondary levels of reasoning. Scores were translated into a five-point scale by doubling the major score, adding the minor score, and dividing by 3 (Haan, 1977). For the purposes of this study, subjects were assigned a single composite moral score that represented an aver- age level of moral reasoning for all four stories. A t-test for correlated samples indicated that for the total sample, moral reasoning in response to life and sport dilemmas did not diverge significantly, t(109) = 1.09, p > .05. A more com- plete analysis of sport and life moral reasoning is presented in Bredemeier (1986a).

308 1 Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, and Cooper

An additional rater was recruited if the original two raters did not agree on their scoring. To determine whether a third scorer was required, major and minor score designations for each story were transformed to single interval scores on a 19-point scale through use of a conversion chart (Haan, 1977). Agreement was defined as scores within four scale points and was 90% among the original two raters for the 424 stories. In the 10% of the cases requiring a third scorer, the most discrepant score was eliminated. Among the final scores, interrater relia- bility was equally high for the four stories; the Spearman-Brown correlation was .91 for ratings for each story.

Aggression Tendencies. Deluty's (1979) Children's Action Tendency Scale (CATS) was administered to assess children's self-reported aggression tenden- cies in everyday situations. This instrument presents 10 situations involving provo- cation, frustration, loss, or conflict. Each situation is followed by three response alternatives-one aggressive, one assertive, and one submissive-which are offered in a paired-comparisons format, thereby yielding three pairs of choices for each situation.

A few minor modifications to Deluty's version of the CATS were made. One conflict that was presented originally within a game context was modified so that it occurs within a school context. Also, a number of Deluty's items in- cluded references to a boy or girl; in the present study, two sex-specific forms of the CATS were developed so that the sex of the story character could be matched with the sex of the subject.

The CATS aggression scores can be subdivided into physical and non- physical aggression subscales; four of the 10 situations present physical aggres- sion alternatives, while the remaining situations offer nonphysical aggression al- ternatives. The CATS subscales have been shown to correlate highly with peer and teacher reports of interpersonal behavior and to possess moderate split-half and test-retest reliability (Deluty, 1979). Construct and concurrent validity of the measure has been demonstrated in conjunction with paper-and-pencil inventory responses (Deluty, 1981, 1983) and with behavioral observations in naturalistic settings (Deluty , 1984).

Bredemeier's (1986b) Scale of Children's Action Tendencies (SCATS) was administered to assess children's self-reported aggression tendencies in sport- specific contexts. The SCATS format is identical to that of the CATS, but SCATS stories are set in game or sport contexts. Again, two sex-specific forms of the SCATS were developed so the sex of the story characters could be matched with the sex of the subject.

As with the CATS, the aggression scores can be divided into physical and nonphysical aggression subscales. Six of the 10 SCATS situations presented physical aggression alternatives, while the remaining situations offered nonphysical aggression alternatives. The SCATS contains a higher number of physical ag- gression alternatives than the CATS since the physical nature of sport, together with constraints inherent in the sport structure, make opportunities for physical- ly aggressive acts more prevalent than those for nonphysical aggressive acts.

The SCATS subscales have been shown to have face validity, and con- current validity has been demonstrated through high correlations with the CATS and moderate correlations with teachers' behavioral ratings. The internal con- sistency reliability of the SCATS aggression scale was .85 (Bredemeier, 1986b).

Sport and Children's Moral Reasoning / 309

Scoring of the CATS and SCATS aggression subscales requires summing the number of times that aggression alternatives were selected. Since a paired- comparisons format is used, a subject could receive two aggression points for each of the 10 conflict situations. It is possible to receive 0-8 "physical aggres- sion" points on the CATS and 0-12 on the SCATS; similarly, it is possible to receive 0-12 "nonphysical aggression" points on the CATS and 0-8 on the SCATS.

Results-Sex and School Level Differences

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between two sets of variables: the sport involvement variables of participation and interest and the morality variables of reasoning maturity and aggression tendencies.

Before examining relations between the sport involvement and morality variables, it was important to analyze the influence of children's sex and school level so interpretations would not be confounded by group differences. The analy- ses were conducted as 2 X 3 (sex by school level) ANOVAs for moral reason- ing, aggression tendencies, and number of seasons of sport participation. (See Table 1 for group means and standard deviations for these variables.) Separate ANOVAs were conducted because sex and school level were not ordered in pri- ority and because the sample sizes were unequal. Likelihood-ratio analyses were performed to test for the association of sex and school level with the sport in- terest variables. For the frequency of selection of low, medium, and high contact sport categories, see Table 2.

Sport Participation and Interest Girls described themselves as having participated in fewer seasons of

medium contact sport than boys, F(2, 100) = 12.21, p < .001, and as not having any experience in high contact sports. The school level main effect was signifi- cant for medium contact sports, F(2, 100) = 4.35, p < .05, with 5th graders reporting more experience than 4th graders (painvise Bonferonni p < .05). No school level differences were found for low or high contact sports. No sex-by- school-level interactions were significant.

Both boys and girls tended to select favorite athletes of their own sex; of those responding to this item, 98% of the boys identified male athletes and 68% of the girls selected female athletes. Boys reported significantly more in- terest than girls in athletes associated with higher contact sports, $L(2) = 11.98, p < .01, and in watching higher contact sports, xZL(2) = 1 1.07, p < .01. NO school level differences were observed for favorite athlete, but spectator interest did vary by school level, gL(4) = 11.07, p < .05. This difference had no mono- tonic association across school levels, nor was any other pattern clear.

Log linear analyses of the 2 X 3 X 3 (sex x school level X contact level) tables were performed to test for a sex-by-school-level interaction. The inter- action was not significant either for favorite athlete, ~ ~ ~ ( 8 ) = 8.53, p > .05, or favorite sport to watch, xZL(8) = 13.30, p > .05.

Moral Reasoning and Aggression Tendencies The sex-by-school-level ANOVA did not reveal any significant main or

interaction effects for moral reasoning. Males had higher scores than females

310 1 Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, and Cooper

Table 1

Means and Standard Deviations for Children's Moral Reasoning, Aggression Tendencies, and Length of Participation

in Low, Medium, and High Contact Sports

School CATS SCATS Sport participation level Moral and sex reasoning P Agg NP Agg P Agg NP Agg Low Med High

6 R Male (n = 15) M SD

617 Female (n = 1 1 ) M SD

5 Male (n = 26) M SD

5 Female (n = 15) M SD

4 Male (n = 23) M SD

4 Female (n = 16) M SD

CATS = Children's Action Tendency Scale SCATS = Scale of Children's Action Tendencies in Sport P Agg = Physical aggression NP Agg = Nonphysical aggression

on all measures of aggression (CATS nonphysical aggression, p < .01; remain- ing aggression scores, p < .001). School level differences in self-described ag- gression tendencies also were found. The main effect for school level was significant for CATS, F(2, 100) = 3 . 8 8 , ~ < .05, and SCATS, F(2, 100) = 3.29, p < .05, physical aggression scores, with Bonferonni post hoc comparisons reveal- ing higher scores for 6th17th graders than for 4th graders (pairwise p < .05). Analyses revealed no significant school level effects for CATS or SCATS non- physical aggression scores. No sex-by-school-level interactions were significant.

Sport and Children's Moral Reasoning 1 31 1

Table 2

Frequency of Interest Categories by School Level and Sex

School level and sex

Favorite athlete Favorite sport to watch*

Low Med High Missing Low Med High

6ff Male 617 Female 5 Male 5 Female 4 Male 4 Female

Total

*No missing data

Correlations Between Sport Involvement and Morality Variables

The absence of interactions between sex and school level simplified the examination of the relationship between sport involvement and moral variables. The general significance of sex as a factor dictated that analyses of association with sport participation be conducted separately for girls and boys.

Analyses of association with sport interest were examined with Kendall's tau-c; they were nested within levels of sex because the likelihood-ratio tests iden- tified significant sex differences. The general influence of increasing school level, as shown by general monotonic increases in scores and several statistically sig- nificant effects, dictated that the school level factor be partialled out of the product moment correlational analyses for all but the sport interest categories. A com- plete presentation of the correlations between sport involvement and the moral variables is presented in Table 3.

Moral Reasoning

Sport Participation. A low negative partial correlation (- .28, controlling for school level) was found between the maturity of boys' moral reasoning and the number of seasons they had participated in high contact sports. Their reason- ing and participation in low and medium contact sports were not related. To a small extent, then, boys who had more experience in high contact sports rea- soned at a lower moral level than boys who had little or no high contact sport experience.

The same inverse relationship between moral reasoning maturity and sport participation was found for girls who had more experience in medium contact sports (- .30). Their reasoning and participation in low contact sports were not related.

Sport Interest. For the boys, the correlation (tau-c) between favorite sport to watch and moral reasoning was - .26; for the 40 boys who reported having

312 1 Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, and Cooper

Table 3

Associations of Sport Participation and Interest With Moral Reasoning and Aggression Tendencies

Participation* Interest* *

Low Medium High Fav. spectate Fav. athlete Fern. Male Fem. Male Fern. Male Fern. Males Fern. Males

Moral reasoning: - .20 - .18 - .30C - .08 - -.28C - . I 1 -.26 - . I 0 - .Mb

Physical aggression:

CATS - .18 .22 .36' .02 - .3ga .33C .47a .27 .37b SCATS .03 .20 .37b -.05 - .3ga .09 .37a .20 .30C

Nonphysical aggression:

CATS .33' .20 .36' - . I 1 - .32b .21 .34b .25 .07 SCATS .OO .16 .36' .O1 - .24C .O1 .35b .O1 .17

a = p<.001; b = p < . O l ; ~ = p < .05 * Female N = 42, male N = 64; analyzed with partial r, controlling for school level **For favorite sport to watch: female N = 42, male N = 64; for favorite athlete: female n = 18, male n = 37; analyzed with taus

a favorite athlete, the correlation with moral reasoning was - .34. Girls' moral reasoning was not related to their sport interests. In sum, boys who reported in- terest in watching higher contact sports tended to have lower levels of moral reasoning, but no relationship between sport interest and moral reasoning for girls was evident.

Aggression Tendencies

Sport Participation. Boys who had more experience in high contact sport described themselves as more physically aggressive in both sport-specific (.39) and daily life (.39) contexts than did boys who had less experience. Their high contact sport experience also was positively correlated with nonphysical aggres- sion in sport (.24) and everyday life (.32).

Like the boys with more experience in high contact sports, girls who had more experience in medium contact sports described themselves as more physi- cally aggressive in both sport (.37) and everyday life (.36); similarly, participa- tion in medium contact sports was positively correlated with nonphysical aggression tendencies in both sport (.36) and daily life (.36). Also, girls' partici- pation in low contact sports was related to nonphysical aggression in everyday life (.33).

Sport and Children's Moral Reasoning 1 313

Sport Interest. Rank-order correlations revealed relationships between boys' aggression tendencies and the degree of physical contact associated with their sport interests. Preference for watching sports characterized by higher physi- cal contact was related to CATS and SCATS physical (.47 and .37, respectively) and nonphysical (-34 and .35) aggression. Having a favorite athlete affiliated with higher contact sport was also related to boys' physical aggressiveness in sport- specific (.37) and daily life (.30) contexts.

Girls' sport interests were related to their self-described physical aggression tendencies in everyday life. Correlations of CATS physical aggression scores with favorite sport event to watch and favorite athlete were .33 and .27, respectively, indicating a positive association between physical aggression tendencies in every- day life and girls' preference for sports with a higher degree of contact.

Sport Interest and Participation: Relative Predictive Abilities

The above pattern of association raised the question of whether tentative differences might be found in the predictive strengths of sport participation and interest for the morality variables. To answer this question, the subset of 55 cases with complete data were examined using multiple regression analyses of variable composites.

A single index of sport participation equivalent to the sum of the seasons of participation in low, medium, and high contact sports was created. A com- posite of sport interest was also calculated as the average of the physical contact levels for favorite athlete and favorite sport to watch (Spearman-Brown reliabili- ty or r[SB] = .73), with high values indicating interest in high contact sports. Composites of CATS and SCATS physical aggression tendencies (r [SB] = .85) and nonphysical aggression tendencies (r[SB] = -81) were utilized in addition to the moral reasoning composite. Each morality composite was separately regressed on the sport participation and interest composites.

Tests of beta weights revealed that sport interest was a better predictor than sport participation of each of the three morality variables. The ability of sport interest to predict physical aggression tendencies was strong, standardized 0 = .54, F(1, 52) = 23.13,p< .001, incomparisontotheabilityof sportpar- ticipation, standardized 0 = .23, F(1, 52) = 4.13, p < .05. The adjusted R2 for interest and participation equaled .38. Sport interest also predicted nonphysical aggression tendencies more strongly, standardized P = .40, F(l, 52) = 10.80, p < .01, than sport participation, standardized P = .27, F(1, 52) = 4.94, p < .05. The adjusted R2 equaled .26. Only the sport interest composite predicted moral reasoning significantly, standardized 0 = - .34, F(l, 53) = 7.02, p < .01, explaining 10% of the variance (adjusted R2). Tests for the difference in intercepts by sex were not significant for any of the equations.

Discussion

Preliminary questions in the present investigation focused on sex and school level differences in sport involvement, moral reasoning, and aggression tendencies. With regard to sport involvement, there are several likely reasons why girls had participated less in medium contact sports than boys had, and why

314 1 Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, and Cooper

only boys had participated in high contact sports. Higher contact sports are more congruent with the traditional male gender role, girls are given little opportunity or encouragement to participate in them, there are few professional female models in these sports, and such sports remain organized and coached almost exclusive- ly by males. Probably for these same reasons, boys also tended to be more in- terested than girls in sports with more physical contact, as indicated by their preference for attending those sports and their admiration for athletes in higher contact sports. School level differences in sport involvement formed no clear patterns.

With regard to moral reasoning, no gender differences were expected (Haan, Aerts, & Cooper, 1985), nor were any found. Anticipated school level differences were not confirmed, however. Though the means generally conformed to developmental expectations, the age span of study participants may have been too narrow to reflect structural changes in moral reasoning.

Finally, as expected (e.g., Hyde, 1984), boys described themselves as more physically and nonphysically aggressive than girls in both sport and daily life contexts. No school level differences were anticipated and none were found for nonphysical aggression; however, physical aggression was found to increase with school level. Deluty (1984) also found an increase in aggressiveness with age, but interpreted this finding as idiosyncratic. In light of the present investiga- tion and other aggression literature suggesting age-related changes (Parke & Sla- by, 1983), a developmental approach to the study of aggression tendencies needs to be initiated.

Sport Involvement and Morality Relationships

Correlation analyses revealed that sport participation and sport interest were related to moral reasoning and aggression tendencies in both sport and every- day life.

Sport Participation. Boys' participation in high contact sports and girls' participation in medium contact sports were related to less mature moral reason- ing and greater tendencies to aggress both physically and nonphysically in sport and daily life contexts. A structural developmental interpretation of these clearly patterned relationships incorporates the interaction between the environment of contact sports and the meaning-construction of sport participants. Sport struc- tures that allow higher levels of contact encourage rough physical play that can sometimes be perceived as aggressive. It is not surprising that participation in these sports was associated with increased aggressiveness in sport. The fact that participation in higher contact sports was also related to self-described tenden- cies to aggress in everyday life suggests that these sport experiences may be related to behavioral tendencies that extend beyond the bounds of the playing field. Fu- ture studies will be needed to investigate the patterns of causality among these variables.

If the sport structure itself were the only significant factor, we would have expected participation in medium contact sports to be similarly related to aggres- sion tendencies for boys and girls. The finding that participation in medium con- tact sports was significantly related to girls' but not to boys' aggression tendencies leads us to posit that the girls and boys in our sample attached different meanings to actions within similar sport structures. Since medium contact sports were the

Sport and Children's Moral Reasoning / 315

roughest that girls had experienced, they may have been more inclined than boys to interpret acts within these sports as aggressive.

The inverse relationship between relatively high contact sport participation and moral reasoning also emphasizes the need for an interactional interpretation of the present findings. The moral reasoning of most study participants ranged between the second and third developmental levels. Movement to Level 3 moral reasoning is facilitated by the development of concern for other people, a view of others as basically good moral beings, and an acceptance of responsibility for one's own moral integrity, defined in terms of altruistic motivation. Participa- tion in relatively high contact sports may impede this transformation to Level 3 moral reasoning. Higher contact sports raise the moral issue of others' wel- fare in a salient manner, yet the highly regulated structure often encourages the projection of personal responsibility onto coaches and officials and discourages dialogue among competitors, thus facilitating a depersonalization of opponents. Finally, the informal combat mentality that often accompanies high contact sports encourages a negative view of others and discourages altruistic interaction. Thus, it is not surprising that participation in higher contact youth sports was more closely associated with assimilative than accommodative moral reasoning, the former also being linked with greater acceptance of aggression (Bredemeier, 1985; Bredemeier & Shields, 1984a).

Finally, girls' participation in low contact sports was related to nonphysical aggression tendencies in daily life. This was the only significant correlation be- tween low contact sport participation and any of the moral reasoning or aggres- sion variables and, unless replicated in future studies, should probably be viewed as idiosyncratic.

Sport Interest. Boys' interest in higher contact sports was related to less mature moral reasoning and greater tendencies to aggress both physically and nonphysically (with one exception) in sport and everyday life. The exception to this is that boys' favorite athlete choices were not related to nonphysical aggression.

We do not know why a particular athlete or sport was appealing to the study participants. The clear pattern for boys, which closely parallels the rela- tionship of their sport participation with their moral reasoning and aggression tendencies, may indicate that boys' sport interests were motivated by a desire to learn game skills and/or by an appreciation of aggression itself. It also may be that the correlations between sport interests and aggression variables reflect the influence of significant others, such as parents or peers, who place a premi- um on certain types of physical expression for boys. High contact sport and its elite participants may be elements used in the socialization of boys into men. Thus, boys' interests in high contact sport may reflect their perceptions of what is valued for them by others.

The failure to find a significant relationship between favorite athlete and nonphysical aggression may simply be a consequence of the fact that a large num- ber of boys (37 %) did not respond to the favorite athlete question. Perhaps many youths in this age group do not have sport heroes.

Girls' sport interests were not related to the morality variables, with the exception of physical aggressiveness in daily life settings. These nonsignificant relationships may indicate that girls' sport interests were not well established (57 % of the girls did not answer the favorite athlete question) and/or that the girls were less motivated than boys by factors such as the learning of game skills, an ap-

316 / Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, and Cooper

preciation of aggression, or the influence of strong socializing agents. With regard to the latter variable, it should be remembered that girls have relatively little ex- posure to professional female athletes either directly or via the media, particular- ly women involved in higher contact sports. Furthermore, since high contact sport experience is not often available for girls, a correlation between sport interest and sport aggression is less likely.

The one notable correlation for girls may reflect a pattern of deviance. It is probably less socially approved for girls to identify higher contact sport ath- letes as favorites or to enjoy watching higher contact sports; similarly, physical aggression is less congruent with the female gender role than nonphysical ag- gression, and aggression in everyday life is less accepted than aggression in sport. For a few girls, these deviations seemed to form a coherent pattern.

Sport Interest and Participation as Predictors

Regression analyses demonstrated the strength of the sport interest com- posite as a predictor of moral reasoning and aggression tendencies. Children's ex- pressed interest in various sports, even more than their participation, may offer a sound indicator of the qualities of sport experience to which children are at- tending and the information they are utilizing in their constructions of social-moral meaning.

The relative predictive strength of sport interest and sport participation, however, must be interpreted in light of the fact that sport participation was de- fined as a composite. Though total length of sport involvement was not a good predictor of the moral variables, the length of participation in a particular type of sport (e.g., high contact) appears to be much better. Future research, incor- porating larger samples with a broader range of sport experience, is needed to determine the relative predictive strength of different kinds of sport participation and sports interest.

Implications and Conclusions

If moral development is derived from an interaction between the mind's active structuring tendencies and environmental experiences that push against the boundaries of the person's current moral understandings, then it is important to reflect on the significance of sport involvement in light of its meaning for in- dividuals at various levels of development.

On the basis of this study, we suggest that involvement in sports character- ized by a relatively high degree of physical contact may be developmentally coun- terproductive for most preadolescent children. The types of social interactions fostered by relatively high contact sports may provide little stimulus for-and may even impede-moral growth. Before such a conclusion can be firmly estab- lished, however, future research is needed to determine the cause-effect relation- ships between sport involvement and morality variables, and more stringent controls must be placed on possible confounding effects such as socioeconomic status.

Sport and Children's Moral Reasoning 1 317

References

Bredemeier, B.J. (1985). Moral reasoning and the perceived legitimacy of intentionally injurious sport acts. Journal of Sport Psychology, 7, 110-124.

Bredemeier, B.J. (1986a). Divergence in children's moral reasoning about sport anddaily life. Manuscript submitted for publication.

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Acknowledgments

Appreciation is extended to Tom Romance and Renee Stacy who assisted with data collection and scoring.

Manuscript submitted: July 5 , 1985 Revision received: July 18, 1986