Antisocial Behavior, Moral Disengagement, Empathy and Negative Emotion: A Comparison Between Disabled and Able-Bodied Athletes

Morality- and Norm-Based Subgroups of Disability-Sport Athletes Differ on Their Anticipated Guilt and Intentions Toward Doping

The purpose of this study was to examine whether subgroups of disability-sport athletes exist on morality- and norm-based doping cognitions and whether these groups differ in anticipated guilt or doping intentions. A survey was completed by 186 athletes (Mage = 37.5 years, 78.0% male, 45.1% wheelchair basketball) assessing norms, doping moral disengagement, anticipated guilt, and intentions to dope. Cluster analysis revealed four distinct subgroups of athletes, including one potentially high-risk subgroup characterized by relatively high scores on doping moral disengagement, subjective norms, and descriptive norms. One-way analysis of variance revealed significantly lower anticipated guilt in two athlete subgroups characterized by relatively higher doping moral disengagement than the other two subgroups. Moreover, the potentially high-risk group had a greater proportion of athletes showing some presence of intention to dope. This study suggests there is a small subgroup of disability-sport athletes at elevated risk of doping who might benefit from targeted antidoping interventions.

Self-Distancing as a Strategy to Regulate Affect and Aggressive Behavior in Athletes: An Experimental Approach to Explore Emotion Regulation in the Laboratory

Self-regulation, especially the regulation of emotion, is an important component of athletic performance. In our study, we tested the effect of a self-distancing strategy on athletes’ performance in an aggression-inducing experimental task in the laboratory. To this end, we modified an established paradigm of interpersonal provocation [Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP)], which has the potential to complement field studies in order to increase our understanding of effective emotion regulation of athletes in critical situations in competitions. In our experimental setting, we first tested the applicability of the self-distancing perspective and the athletes’ ability to dynamically adapt besides the self-distanced perspective a self-immersed perspective to provocation in the TAP. Secondly, we investigated how this altered perspective modulated regulatory abilities of negative affectivity, anger, and aggression. The experiment consisted of two conditions in which the participant adopted either a self-immersed or a self-distanced perspective. Forty athletes (female: 23; male: 17) from different team (n = 27) and individual sports (n = 13) with a mean age of 23.83 years (SD = 3.41) competed individually in a reaction-time task against a (fictitious) opponent. Results show that athletes are equally able to adopt both perspectives. In addition, within-person analyses indicate that self-distancing decreased aggressive behavior and negative affect compared to the self-immersed perspective. Our results suggest that self-distancing modulates different levels of athletes’ experience (i.e., affect and anger) and behavior. Furthermore, this demonstrates the feasibility of testing self-regulation of emotion in athletes in a laboratory setting and allows for further application in research in sports and exercise psychology.

An Intelligent Gesture Classification Model for Domestic Wheelchair Navigation with Gesture Variance Compensation

Elderly and disabled population is rapidly increasing. It is important to uplift their living standards by improving the confidence towards daily activities. Navigation is an important task, most elderly and disabled people need assistance with. Replacing human assistance with an intelligent system which is capable of assisting human navigation via wheelchair systems is an effective solution. Hand gestures are often used in navigation systems. However, those systems do not possess the capability to accurately identify gesture variances. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to create an intelligent gesture classification system with a gesture model which was built based on human studies for every essential motion in domestic navigation with hand gesture variance compensation capability. Experiments have been carried out to evaluate user remembering and recalling capability and adaptability towards the gesture model. Dynamic Gesture Identification Module (DGIM), Static Gesture Identification Module (SGIM), and Gesture Clarifier (GC) have been introduced in order to identify gesture commands. The proposed system was analyzed for system accuracy and precision using results of the experiments conducted with human users. Accuracy of the intelligent system was determined with the use of confusion matrix. Further, those results were analyzed using Cohen's kappa analysis in which overall accuracy, misclassification rate, precision, and Cohen's kappa values were calculated.

Moral behavior in sport

In this review paper, we provide an overview of recent research on prosocial and antisocial behaviors, in the context of sport, focusing mainly on antecedents and consequences of these behaviors. Motivational variables such as task orientation, mastery climate, autonomous motivation, and autonomy supportive climate are likely to promote prosocial behavior, whereas ego orientation, performance climate, controlled motivation, and controlling climate may lead to antisocial behavior. The effects of some motivational variables (i.e., controlled motivation and controlling climate) on antisocial behavior may be mediated by moral disengagement, which has been consistently linked to antisocial behavior across a number of studies. Two moral variables, moral identity and empathy have been found to inhibit antisocial behavior, and their effects are due to anticipated guilt for acting antisocially. With respect to consequences of teammate behavior, some evidence suggests that prosocial behavior may enhance the recipient's enjoyment, effort, commitment, and performance, whereas antisocial behavior could lead to anger. Finally, the frequency of prosocial and antisocial behaviors varies as a function of context: Student athletes display more antisocial behavior towards their opponents compared to their fellow students but also more prosocial behavior towards their teammates than towards their fellow students. In sum, both motivational and moral variables predict prosocial and antisocial behaviors in sport, and these behaviors can have important consequences for the recipient.