The relationship between aggressive play in footballmatches and the response of the viewers.

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Abstract

              Abstract

In 1979, Atkins designed a study to investigate the correlation between violence in TV and the aggressive response by the viewers. He found that 45% of heavy TV violence viewers always respond aggressively, only 21% of participants who watch little TV violence respond aggressively. From this previous study, I developed this research. The main aim of this research is to investigate whether there is a correlation between aggressive play in football match and an aggressive response by the watchers, further more, to discover whether there is a positive correlation between these two, that means, whether the players play more aggressively in the match would lead to more aggressive responses by the viewers. To achieve these aims, two questionnaires were used, the first questionnaire was given to football watchers in a pub, the other was given to supporters participating in the playground. Each questionnaire was handed out to 10 participants (totalling 20), 15 of them are male, 5 are female. Participants were selected through self-selected sampling.

  Results showed that, generally, aggressive play in a football match would lead to an aggressive response, therefore a correlation was found, in addition evidence showing that a positive correlation exists.

             

            Introduction

Aggression is a type of Anti-social behavior. It can be defined into three aspects. Antisocial aggression which is the behavior intended to inflict physical or psychological harm on other individual who does not want to be so treated. Prosocial aggression would also cause the physical or psychological harm to someone, but the intention is to protect someone out of harm, for example, police shoot a terrorist in order to rescue the hostages. Sanctioned aggression which the intention is self-defense.

  In sport psychology, the distinction between different aggressions is similar. It concerns the intention of the behavior.

  Baron (1977) suggested that in sport, hostile aggression takes place when the primary intention of the behavior is to harm the other player, while Instrumental aggression takes place when the intention is score a point or achieve a higher performance or prevent the opposition scoring a goal.

  Tenenbaum (1997) further pointed out that spectator in sports such as football supporters also can display both hostile and instrumental aggression. A crowd may hurl objects and abuse at players. If they do so with the aim of giving their own team an advantage, this constitutes instrumental aggression. If however, It is done in anger and with the intention of harming opposing players, the behavior would be classed as hostile aggression.

 

  Aggression in sport can be explained in three approaches.

  First, instinct theories suggest that aggression is instinctive and sometimes cannot be avoided. Freud (1919) proposed that our death instincts which we are born with lead us to be aggressive. He also suggested that sport is a healthy way of expressing our aggressive instincts. Richards (1994) suggested that football is particularly important in sublimating our aggressive instincts.

  An alternative to instinct theory is social learning theory. It suggests that aggression can be learnt by imitation and reinforcement. Children witness aggressive play in sport combined with positive reinforcement, e.g the coach’s praise for scoring in the match due to aggressive play. Then children may copy that aggression. The point can also apply to professional players in different types of sport.

  Finally, the frustration aggression hypothesis first suggested by Dollard (1939) sees the most important factors in aggression as the characteristics of the situation. Frustration was seen as always leading to aggression. Berkowitz (1993) developed this point of view that frustration leads to anger rather than directly to aggression, because our higher mental processes, e.g thinking, reasoning can prevent us from responding to frustration with aggression. However, aggression may be happened once the anger is great enough or if we cannot think logically at that moment. A very obvious example would be the “back-kick” produced by David Beckham in the 1998 world cup which in some way resulted from extreme frustration at the time of his actions.

  In social learning theory, Bandura’s(1963) “bobo doll” study showed us how children learn aggressive behavior through positive reinforcement for the aggression they viewed. Applied to sport watchers, they may think that their aggressive response to the opposing team could give their own team an advantage, it become the positive reinforcement for them, therefore, they started to respond aggressively to gain this advantage for their team. It suggests that reinforcement would effect the link between an aggressive response and aggressive play in sport events, in other words, if the aggressive response by viewers created a positive reinforcement for them, they are more likely to do so.

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  The theory of deindividuation suggests that people behave aggressively because their social identity is lost in special situations such as in a big group of people. The increase in anonymity leads to people taking less responsibility, people do not have to follow the social norm that they would follow on their own, and they behave different from as usual as they do, ie aggressive behavior of a big group of football supporters is due to each person of the group thinking they are anonymous.

  The studies of media influences of anti-social behaviors help us to take a deeper ...

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