What Is The Psychological Background Behind Sport Violence?

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Extensive research has been done by various sources; the following literature review explains the psychological background behind sport violence as well as primitive instincts that tend to kick in at sporting events. A few of the more well-known examples of sport violence and violence committed by sporting figures will also be given as well as examples of sport violence from spectators.
In a book called Social issues in sport, second edition by Ronald B. Woods (2011) he believes that people who are shown violence in sports pick up violent characteristics when they are outside of their respective sport. However Jeff Wise (2013) would argue that violence (such as a riot) portrayed at sporting events would be the cause of mass stress amongst …show more content…

However he does state that he did not have enough data of domestic violence from athletes to take a definitive stand
Wise (2013) agrees with Woods (2013) that students are a huge part of sport related violence as he mentions that Ohio State students began a riot in 2002 after they had beaten their rivals, Michigan. Woods (2011) states that 21.4% of NFL football players had been arrested for serious offences. Wise (2013) says that a main reason why people form riots at sporting events is tribalism and as humans we look for a common interest in times of conflict. Wise (2013) also states that when a group that we belong to is threatened is it something as a sports team our primal and violent instincts emerge resulting in physical conflicts. Riots are often started by the winning team, states Wise (2013) and are known as celebrating riots. Wise (2013) says that one of the main reasons people riot is the rapid increase in testosterone levels, he states that research done at Cardiff University says that fans of the winning team say that they feel more aggressive as compared to the losing …show more content…

Athletes begin to develop higher views of themselves as a byproduct of their fame and often begin to show disrespect towards women as they are constantly surrounded by female fans who have to sole purpose of having sex with the athletes as shown by Woods’ (2011) research.
An example of this comes from Woods’ (2011) research where he talks about boxing champion Mike Tyson case where he was accused and found guilty of attacking and raping Desiree Washington where Mike Tyson eventually said that he hated the woman and “Now I really do want to rape her”
However also in Woods’(2011) research he states that athletes are also victims of similar cases just the other way around where a woman would consent to a sexual relation with an athlete and then accuse the athlete of raping her. with a majority percentage of the players in the NBA(National Basketball Association) and NFL (National Football League) being African American many Caucasian Americans became both jealous and suspicious and a study showed that 56% of Caucasian Americans believed that African Americans were more violent than Caucasian Americans because of what they see on the sports

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