Date of Graduation

2002

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

Aggression in sport, either hostile or instrumental, is defined within the literature as purposeful and having the capacity to be rule-violating, leading to penalties or potentially causing psychological or physical injury to another. To date, few studies have looked at controlling and reducing levels of aggression and penalty minutes with ice hockey players. No research has developed a program specifically for controlling ice hockey players' aggression. Sport psychology literature does include research done by Silva (1982), which only looked at one variable in terms of stress reduction in teaching stress management skills to overly aggressive ice hockey players. The general purpose of this investigation was to implement a three-week aggression-management training intervention program among a sample of three West Virginia University collegiate club ice hockey players in an effort to reduce player penalty minutes. Results of the group data analyses, using a single-subject, multiple-baseline design across individuals with three phases for each subject, revealed that there was a decrease in an ice hockey player's mean levels of penalty minutes from baseline to the intervention phase. Group analyses showed each ice hockey player lowering penalty minutes during the three-week intervention phase with a decrease in mean levels. The aggression-management training intervention program was found to reduce penalty minutes for each ice hockey player through both the intervention and post-intervention phases with an overall decrease in penalty minute percentage. The study's unique combination of aggression measures through number of penalty minutes and self-report data has the potential to make future research on aggression applicable to a sport population. The aggression-management training intervention program used in this study could eventually lead to aggressive behavior being channeled into dominant and achievement oriented behavior. Given the introduction of the ABC model of emotion utilizing positive self-talk, deep breathing, and coping imagery the athlete is provided with the opportunity to be assertive and not aggressive.

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