How Status Conflict Undermines Athletes' Willingness to Help New Teammates

Abstract

Drawing from theory on social hierarchy and intragroup behaviors, the current study examined whether status conflicts attenuate willingness to help newcomers. Using experimental vignettes with high-level team sport athletes (N = 112), the results demonstrated that athletes were less willing to help high-status newcomers who played the same position than newcomers who played (a) a different position and (b) the same position but were described to be lower status. Our findings show that when positional competition creates a salient status threat, this can curtail an athlete's willingness to help in the socialization processes of a teammate.

Notes

1 Skewness (−1.09 to −0.31) and kurtosis (−0.12 to 1.76) of the residuals for the measures were acceptable, and the assumption of sphericity was supported by a nonsignificant Mauchly's test. We also examined whether the pattern of results differed as a function of athletes' self-identified starting status (dummy coded 1 = starter, 0 = nonstarter) or sex of the participant (dummy coded 1 = female, 0 = male). There was no significant interaction between self-identified starting status and the two manipulated factors (newcomer status and position) in relation to sharing information (p = .556), motivational orientation toward newcomer (p = .670) or sponsorship mentoring (p = .477). Likewise, there was no significant interaction between participant sex and the manipulated factors in relation to sharing information (p = .892), motivational orientation toward newcomer (p = .604), or sponsorship mentoring (p = .948).