Perceived aggression in sports and its relation to willingness to participate and perceived risk of injury

The purpose of this study was three-fold: assess relationships among perceived hostile aggression, instrumental aggression, and assertion for a set of collegiate sports, categorize the sports by rated aggression, and present relationships of aggression with ratings of likelihood of career-ending injuries, personal willingness to participate, and the perceived desirability of participation in the sports by others. The sports were rated on the variables by 285 undergraduates enrolled in psychology courses in a large private university in the western USA. Mean age for men was 23.7 yr. (SD = 2.3) and for women 21.3 yr. (SD = 2.7). A 4 (rating category) x 16 (sport) repeated-measures analysis of variance showed significant main and interaction effects. The sports were classified according to level of aggression in post hoc analysis. Perceived risk of a career-ending injury was linearly related to aggregate aggression, whereas willingness to participate and desirability of the sport for others had quadratic relationships to both aggregate aggression and risk of career-ending injury.