Social influence and conformity behavior across college student-athletes when judging aggressive acts in sports

The purpose of this study was to determine the social influence of athletes on other athletes when judging aggressive acts in sports. There is a lack of research on social influence and conformity behavior among athletes. Participants (N = 30) were obtained by recruiting from the athlete study tables at a Midwestern NCAA Division I university. There were three hypotheses for the research. The first was that the confederates would have a significant influence on the participants. The second was that the confederates would have a significant influence on those participants who participated in the same sport. The third hypothesis was that the confederates would have a significant influence on those participants of the same gender.The results showed that the confederates had no significant effect on the participants. All of the scores were high and not significantly different from that of the confederates. The second hypothesis could not be tested due to low numbers that fit the hypothesis. For the third hypothesis the gender of the confederate had no significant influence on the participants. These findings though not supporting the hypotheses, are good news for the sports world. It would appear that athletes can act independently from each other at least when judging aggressive acts in sports. However most of the participants did score the questionnaire fairly high, meaning that they did not feel that the scenarios depicted were overly aggressive.School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise ScienceThesis (M.A.