Featured Topic: Sport

Featured Topic: Sport

As the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games come to a close for another season, sports participants and fans around the world will be celebrating victories and records, mourning losses, reliving key moments, and preparing for the next Games in their chosen field or fields. Even those of us who are not especially sports-inclined may find ourselves caught up in tracking our country’s progress on the medals chart, or feeling a boost in national pride and camaraderie when we see our flag displayed on a news report.

The sense of community generated by sports isn’t confined to large-scale events like the Olympics and Paralympics, though. Whether they are played individually or as part of a team, sporting endeavors have been linked to many aspects of social behavior, with Dinç (2011) describing sport as “one of the social activities most likely to improve quality of life” (p. 1417). As such, SBP’s published works on this topic span a range of variables, including participants’ and spectators’ self-esteem, enjoyment, goal orientation, and commitment.

In terms of motives for watching sports, connecting with fellow fans seems to be a popular reason. Wang et al. (2013) conducted a literature review of the predictability of sports spectator motives, and reported that spectator well-being was a significant mediator influencing the effect of achievement, aesthetics, knowledge, family, and escape on both revisit intention and word-of-mouth recommendations. Further, Kim et al. (2013) found that achievement seeking enhanced Formula One spectators’ repurchase intentions and word-of-mouth intention.

SBP authors have examined not just why athletes choose to initiate participation in sport but also why they continue to do so, with Dinç (2011) comparing various aspects of social self-efficacy as determinants for adolescents taking part in team and individual sports. Their results showed no significant differences according to gender for the various sporting codes they studied, although socioeconomic status did play an influential role. In addition, Wang and Chu (2016) investigated potential differences in level of sport commitment and its associated antecedents for older adult ballroom dancers, and reported that participation method, experience level, and frequency of participation had a significant effect on personal investment in ballroom dancing.

Circling back to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Sukys and Majauskiene (2014) examined the effect of an integrated program of Olympic education on adolescent athletes’ values and behaviors in sport, finding that these athletes scored higher on human values of Olympism, social virtues of Olympism, individual pursuit of excellence, and the prosocial behavior in sport. In an adjacent setting, Lin and Chen (2020) studied attitudes toward elite sport policies and found that using a social media platform was effective in communicating sport policy to both college student and nonstudent populations.

The variety of settings encompassed by these studies shows how much a part of everyday life sport is for many people. Interested in finding out more about sport from a behavioral and social psychology perspective? Our journal archive contains dozens of articles on this and other, related subjects over our five decades of publication. Sign up for a personal subscription to SBP to gain access to over 4,050 papers spanning the fields of social, behavioral, and developmental psychology.

Social self-efficacy of adolescents who participate in individual and team sports – Zeynep Dinç, 2011, 39(10), 1417–1424.

Fulfillment of sport spectator motives: The mediation effect of well-being – TzuShuo Ryan Wang, Sophia D. Min, and Suk Kyu Kim, 2013, 41(9), 1421–1434.

Social motivations and consumption behavior of spectators attending a Formula One motor-racing event – Suk-Kyu Kim, Kevin K. Byon, Jae-Gu Yu, James J. Zhang, and Chong Kim, 2013, 41(8), 1359–1378.

Older adults' participation in ballroom dancing: Practical application of the sport commitment model – Chien-Hsin Wang and Angel Yin Chu, 2016, 44(3), 445–452.

Effects of an integrated Olympic education program on adolescent athletes' values and sport behavior – Saulius Sukys and Daiva Majauskiene, 2014, 42(5), 811–822.

Effect of persuasion via social media on attitude toward elite sport policies – Yi-Hsiu Lin and Chen-Yueh Chen, 2020, 48(3), Article e8709.