all's fair in love, war, and sports (and markets?)

a recent 17-year study claims that morality declines with prolonged involvement in sports, and that women have an equal share in this effect. what's more, team sports are much worse for moral development than individual ones.

"moral development" was gauged by measuring values such as honesty, justice, fairness, and responsibility, but only during athletic events. this seems to leave room for the possibility that sports do not lead to immoral people, but rather that athletes may not see athletics bound by the same moral rules (previous studies indicate this with other games). indeed, they may even see bending rules as part of the game.

we could tenuously link this to real-life by hypothesizing that athletic competition is similar to market competition (although profits and wins are very different). yet we must first ask if we really care about the values above in market interactions - a true market believer might say that these behaviors would be weeded out eventually if they harmed the consumer, for who would buy from a known dishonest company/person? therefore competition provides both the problem and the cure (although certainly harming lots of folks along the way - think enron). in team sports, at least, we can't see this; athletes are generally forced to play each other. in trade, not so much.

this, of course, all assumes self-report data on deontological surveys is valid in the first place. and that monopolies don't exist.

Labels: social