People ordinarily refrain from behaving in ways that violate their core moral standards because such conduct will bring self-censure. In some institutional role functions, however, such as military combat and state executions, the taking of human life presents a grave moral predicament. Intentional infliction of death and destruction can, therefore, exact a heavy emotional toll
Moral disengagement is the conditional endorsement of transgressive behavior through the use of any of eight psychosocial mechanisms and is apparent in sport when players rationalize harmful behaviors such as injuring or deliberately fouling opponents. The eight mechanisms of moral disengagement operate by minimizing or eliminating unpleasant emotional reactions (e.g., guilt, shame) normally associated with
Moral judgment refers to the determination a person makes about an action (or inaction), motive, situation, or person in relation to standards of goodness or rightness. People articulate a moral judgment, for example, when they say that an action is right or wrong, that a person is good or bad, or that a situation is
Moral reasoning is focused on what, from a moral standpoint, a person should do in a given situation. Moral reasoning addresses issues of right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and vice. Moral reasoning seeks to answer these questions: What ought to be done? What is the right thing to do? Athletes use moral reasoning
The study of morality in sport has attracted the interest of many sport psychologists, partly because of the pervasive and long-held belief across many scholars and lay people that sport builds character. Research in this area of sport psychology (SP) has looked at whether sport participation is indeed linked to moral behavior by examining issues
Moral development refers to the age-related developmental processes that individuals undergo as they become more knowledgeable, consistent, and responsive in their ethical functioning. Moral development includes cognitive, affective, volitional, and behavioral elements, and developmental lags in any of these areas can result in ethical violations. For example, an athlete who exhibits sophisticated thinking about ethical
The concept of moral atmosphere was originally described by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates, who investigated school and prison environments to determine the influence of the group norms of these settings on moral reasoning and behavior. They proposed that, over time, groups develop their own culture and a shared understanding of what is appropriate behavior as
The term moral behavior is used with at least two different meanings in the literature. The first is when researchers explicitly define moral behavior and refer to the conditions in which an act is right, or ethical; when these conditions are met, the behavior can be called moral. For example, Augusto Blasi defined moral behavior
A moral panic is an episode or period of community fear or hysteria generated by a perceived social crisis or emergency. The term moral panic was coined by sociologist Jock Young in the early 1970s and popularized by sociologist Stanley Cohen in a 1973 book, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods
Reports often indicate fears that violence in society is on the rise, especially on high school and college campuses throughout the United States. While there might be some validity in these concerns, they are often the result of what sociologists, psychologists, and criminologists term a moral panic. A moral panic can be defined as the