Mind games increasing in sports

In the world of sport, there is something of a blurry distinction between doing everything in your power to win the game fairly, and bending the rules to give yourself an advantage. The ongoing Wagatha Christie court case proves that these tendencies can sometimes spill over into the families of professional athletes as well. Now a new study looking at the action going on in a very different type of court, a basketball court to be precise, has been observing the frequency of acts of violence during match play over time. Assaf Lev, a former professional player himself, is now a Sport and Exercise Anthropologist at the Ono Academic College in Israel. He wanted to see what the consequences of stricter rules against violent physical actions in the NBA, the world’s top basketball league, might have had on other behaviours; actions seeking to hand the perpetrator a psychological advantage. James Tytko asked him how he made the journey from athlete to academic…

Assaf - As a professional basketball player, I always wanted just to know a little bit more. I was fascinated by the conflicts and physical aggression as part of the game, but I didn't really have the tools. Today being a sports and exercise anthropologist, I can look at things differently.

James - I think it's really cool that your job exists; trying to get to the bottom of why sport energises people in the way that it does. Not because we're just admiring the physical feats of excellence, but the passion and emotion derived from the rivalries and the competition. Because sport can bring out the best and worst in us, can't it? And that's where we come to your study to think about aggression. And your study differentiates between two types of violence; physical and symbolic violence. Can you outline what you mean by those terms?

Assaf - Physical violence. It's the most common type of violence we're talking about -  elbowing and pushing, and you can see it on many sports fields. It's a very straightforward type of violence. Symbolic violence is more tricky and we don't really perceived symbolic violence as violence, but in the heart, in the core of this symbolic violence is the intention to diminish or to belittle your opponent. Those little things like body gestures, even gazing him or her differently.

James - The study was keeping track of these two types of violence over a 20 year period in NBA basketball games. Was there something you were expecting to see?

Assaf - I have noticed for years that the physical violence is still there, but it's definitely decreased over the year. And given the harsh sanctions many NBA players face, they think twice before executing any physical violence. But I have noticed that the symbolic violence such as trash talking, crossovers and some slam dunks on the face of the opponents or what, in general, we used to say posterising, it has become such a major "weapon". But then I was fascinated after, where we conducted the paper, delving into the details, the data itself, we were very surprised to see that physical violence is still here. We can see how the more symbolic violence turns down.

James - Is there a sense that less dramatic physical violence we're seeing and the rise in symbolic violence at the same time; is a sport like basketball, just by its nature, an activity in which there is drama, there is violence and maybe that's part of its appeal?

Assaf - All types of violence, all of them are part of the game. Yes. And we see some previous studies showing that the audience, the crowd, they want very like vivid physical contact. This is part of the game. Definitely. I totally agree with you, James.

James - I think everyone in this country who watches football for years will say, oh, the game's gone soft. It's not what it used to be. I want to know how we can find a balance between still encouraging that aggressive side of the game that we all grew up to love, with wanting to mitigate the violence, which we can sometimes see and which we obviously don't want to encourage.

Assaf - We should ask ourselves where we draw the line. And I don't think that I do have a great answer here, I don't. But what I can tell you is that people, again, try, or maybe they're talking about condemning the physical violence, but the symbolic violence, we are encouraging more in the crowd and sometimes on TV, and so on. We do not perceive symbolic violence as something degrading, as something insulting. Every year we see the consequences. It's not only on court, but you can see how it has shifted also on the every day or in the neighborhood or something. Back in the day, it wasn't a big deal, basically, it was nothing. But these days we can see that people are going to laugh at you, people are going to insult you. I think it's a serious matter. And that can cause real psychological harm.