Linking facets of pride with moral behaviour in sport: the mediating role of moral disengagement

ABSTRACT

Research has yet to examine how authentic and hubristic pride relate to moral behaviour toward teammates and opponents in sport. We investigated the extent to which authentic and hubristic pride are related to prosocial and antisocial behaviour in sport directly and indirectly via moral disengagement. Team sport players (N = 319) completed measures of pride, prosocial and antisocial behaviour, and moral disengagement. Path analyses revealed that authentic pride was directly and positively associated with prosocial behaviour, while hubristic pride was positively associated with antisocial behaviour directly and indirectly via moral disengagement. Hubristic pride was also indirectly associated with prosocial behaviour toward opponents via moral disengagement. Overall, our findings suggest that interventions that promote authentic pride and deter hubristic pride may foster ethical conduct in competitive sport.

KEYWORDS:

• antisocial behaviour
• authentic pride
• hubristic pride
• prosocial behaviour
• self-conscious emotion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Data for moral disengagement and antisocial opponent behaviour from a sub-sample (N = 251) of participants in this study was also used in a previous study (Stanger et al. 2013), which addressed a different research question and study purpose.

2 As a recent meta-analysis (Graupensperger et al., 2018) found significant associations between prosocial opponent and prosocial teammate behaviour, antisocial opponent and antisocial teammate behaviour, antisocial opponent and prosocial teammate behaviour (in adults), and between antisocial teammate and prosocial opponent behaviour, we included correlated errors for these links in the model.

3 Additional analyses were conducted to explore model fit without controlling for gender. The initial model had an adequate-to-excellent model fit, SBχ² (2) = 5.30, p = .07, RMSEA = 0.07, CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.90, SRMR = 0.02, and the final more parsimonious model, had an excellent fit, SBχ² (5) = 6.04, p = .30, RMSEA = 0.03, CFI = 1.00, TLI = 0.99, SRMR = .02. However, as model fit improved when controlling for gender, we only report statistics controlling for gender in our main analyses. Paths in the model without controlling for gender are also reported in the Supplementary file for reference. In the final model with gender as a covariate, pathways for gender to hubristic pride (estimate = −.30, p < .001), moral disengagement (estimate = −.32, p < .001), antisocial opponent behaviour (estimate = −.14, p <.01), and antisocial teammate behaviour (estimate = −.18, p < .001) were significant. However, the path for gender to authentic pride (estimate = −.05, p = .39) was not significant.

4 All three indirect effects were also significant when not controlling for gender in the model.