Behind the Scenes: What Did We Do?

To explore this dynamic, we conducted a cross-sectional study with 350 undergraduate students from a public university in Türkiye. Instead of simply asking how often they played sports, we focused on their internalized values—how deeply they embraced the ethical-moral values of sports (like fair play and respect), social interaction, and healthy competition.

Participants completed validated questionnaires measuring their attitudes toward violence, sexual harassment, and sport. We then ran a statistical moderation analysis, controlling for gender, to see if these sports values changed the strength of the relationship between violence and harassment beliefs.

The Big Discovery: What Did We Find?

First, our data confirmed a troubling reality: a positive attitude toward violence was significantly linked to a higher tolerance for sexual harassment. Additionally, consistent with prior literature, male participants reported significantly higher tolerance toward sexual harassment than female participants.

But our most crucial finding was the "buffering" effect of sports. We discovered that as participants' positive attitudes toward sport increased, the dangerous association between violence-supportive and harassment-supportive attitudes significantly weakened. Essentially, internalizing sports values acted as a cognitive filter, meaning that even if an individual held violence-supportive beliefs, a strong ethical sports mindset made it much harder for those beliefs to translate into the acceptance of sexual harassment.

Why Does This Matter?

These findings highlight that sports are far more than just physical exercise; they represent a vital domain for moral socialization. When individuals repeatedly engage with and internalize the principles of fair play, rule adherence, and mutual respect, these values can help disrupt the cognitive normalization of coercive behaviors. This suggests that actively promoting the core ethical values of sports—rather than just physical participation—could be an innovative tool in broader violence and harassment prevention strategies.

Next Steps

While this study offers an exciting exploratory step, there is more work to do. Moving forward, our team wants to investigate how different dimensions of sport attitudes (for instance, ethical-moral values versus sheer competitiveness) might exert different effects. We also hope to explore how specific sport environments, peer norms, and coach-athlete relationships shape these moral frameworks in the real world.