The dark side of sports: Personality, values, and athletic aggression

The present research examined whether the Dark Tetrad facets-narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism-are predictive of engagement in athletic aggression. In Study 1, participants (N = 603) received a list of 46 sport activities and were asked to assess the level of aggressiveness of the sport activity they participate in most intensively. They also provided self-reports of the Dark Tetrad. As predicted, athletic aggression was positively related to all facets of the Dark Tetrad. Multiple regression analyses showed that psychopathy had the most robust association with the engagement in athletic aggression. Study 2 (N = 208) showed that differences in the endorsement of self-transcendence values (benevolence and universalism) accounted for the relationships between Machiavellianism and psychopathy and athletic aggression. As also predicted, most of the Dark Tetrad scales were positively related to self-enhancing values (achievement and power). However, because self-enhancing values were not related to athletic aggression, they did not account for the relationship between the Dark Tetrad and engagement in athletic aggression. Overall, it appears that people who score relatively high on antagonistic personality traits tend to care little about the well-being of other people and therefore have little hesitation in harming others in their sporting activities.