Aggression in the Sports World: A social psychological perspective
Gordon W. Russell
Abstract
This book was written for colleagues, students, and knowledgeable sports fans. Strong international and interdisciplinary themes underlie the presentation of the best and most recent findings on questions surrounding sports aggression. Topics range from those with a narrow focus on the personality of hooligans and others, the role of drugs both legal and illegal, sports heroes, and the media in relationship to interpersonal aggression. A broader focus encompasses topics that include environmental factors such as temperature and noise in addition to cultural influences that exert strong effects ... More
This book was written for colleagues, students, and knowledgeable sports fans. Strong international and interdisciplinary themes underlie the presentation of the best and most recent findings on questions surrounding sports aggression. Topics range from those with a narrow focus on the personality of hooligans and others, the role of drugs both legal and illegal, sports heroes, and the media in relationship to interpersonal aggression. A broader focus encompasses topics that include environmental factors such as temperature and noise in addition to cultural influences that exert strong effects on human aggression. That most revered concept in sports, that is competition, is examined and clarified both with respect to its definition and relationship to aggression. A major portion of the book is dedicated to crowd violence at sporting and entertainment events. Questions of who riots, why they riot, and situations that favor their occurrence are addressed. Similarly, research into the underlying cause of crowd panics and the peculiar behavior of those caught up in panics is examined. A series of proposals intended to avert or minimize the severity of riots and panics accompanies both topics. A concluding feature of the book provides a brief introduction to the means by which social scientists investigate questions of aggression as well as a capsule summary of several traditional theories of aggression.
Keywords:
competition,
drugs,
environment,
heroes,
hooligans,
media,
panics,
personality,
riots
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195189599 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2008 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189599.001.0001 |
