PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL’S UNSPORTSMANLIKE FOULS: AN OVERARCHED PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL-COGNITIVE ACCOUNT
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Authors: Yuval Wolf, Yael Idisis
Keywords: unsportsmanlike fouls, aggression, victimization, professional football
Abstract: The present study focuses on the way unsportsmanlike fouls in-vivo in professional football are perceived by the beholders. The study was conducted within the framework of a multi-factorial model which enabled an inclusion under the same umbrella several parameters, which have been traditionally treated by different models. All 16 combinations between aggressive (much or a little) and victimized (much or a little) perpetrator and aggressive (much or a little) and victimized (much or a little) victim were included in the model. The personal history of involvement in unsportsmanlike incidents of all well-known players in the Israeli premier league (n = 341) was summarized by five experts (four leading coaches and a leading referee) in terms of the relevant dispositions, i.e., aggression and susceptibility to victimization. In Study 1, video-taped recordings of 76 professional games were observed and analyzed by well-trained assessors. On a basis of practically a complete inter-assessors agreement, the specific frequency of unsportsmanlike incidents in each cell of the model was counted (overall 3094). Meaningful number of incidents was found in each of the four components of the model, the size order being as follows: Perpetrator’s aggressiveness > Victim’s victimization > Victim’s aggressiveness > Perpetrator’s victimization. In Study 2, 42 participants, drawn arbitrarily from the original sample, rated in each of the 16 cells of the original model the likelihood that an unsportsmanlike foul will be committed in case of a tensed meeting between a potential perpetrator and a potential victim (both are well known to the participants. The findings indicate, in tandem with the findings of Study 1, that both dispositions (aggressiveness and victimization) of both protagonists (perpetrator and victim) were assigned with meaningful importance, the size order being similar to that of Study 1. Two experiments were included in Study 3. One of them replicated the design and procedure of Study 2 with one exception: The participants’ ratings of the likelihood of unsportsmanlike fouls focused on the victim; that is, they rated the likelihood that the victim will be attacked in each of the model’s 16 conditions. The findings were approximately similar to the findings of Study 2 in terms of assignment of relative importance. Nevertheless, a tendency to predict lower rate of unsportsmanlike fouls when the focus is on the victim was observed. The additional experiment exposed an invariance of proactive (predictions) and retroactive (moral) judgments of unsportsmanlike fouls. It is contended that the findings are innovative due to the exemplification of overarching between the poles of relevant parameters: Perpetrator and victim; aggressiveness and victimization; violence in-vivo and perception of violence; proactive judgment and retroactive judgment. Conceptual and methodological purification of the findings and the model are proposed, and applied implications of the findings are suggested in the form of the facilitation of reduction of some players’ tendency to commit unsportsmanlike fouls.