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Seeing or Being the Victim of Toxic Leadership in Sports : How the Position to an Offense Affects Preferred Justice Responses
Fobbe, M. (2025) Seeing or Being the Victim of Toxic Leadership in Sports : How the Position to an Offense Affects Preferred Justice Responses.
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| Abstract: | This study investigated responses to toxic leadership in sports, focusing on restorative (rehabilitative) versus retributive (punitive) justice preferences. It was hypothesized that (1) victims would show a stronger preference for restorative justice and a weaker preference for retributive justice and (2) this relationship would be mediated by moral outrage (linked to retributive justice) and the needs for communion and agency (linked to restorative justice). To examine these hypotheses, an experiment was set up in which participants were randomly allocated to a victim (N=100) or bystander (N=96) condition in which they were asked to imagine a scenario of being the victim or bystander of a case of toxic leadership in a sports association and then indicated their preferred justice response. A linear regression- and mediation analysis suggested nuanced results. Hypothesis 1 was rejected as, in contrast to predictions, there was no significant effect between position to incident and justice response. However, a tendency was observed as participants of the victim group tended to prefer a restorative justice response more than those in the bystander group. Hypothesis 2 was also rejected as none of the mediators had an indirect effect as predicted. Unexpectedly, participants of the victim group did report a stronger moral outrage level than those in the bystander group, which, in turn, predicted a stronger retributive justice response. It was concluded that victims tended to favor restorative over retributive justice. However, victim’s retributive justice response was also enhanced through a stronger moral outrage level than for bystanders. These findings underline how more variables, such as time since offense and the changing sports culture, need to be taken into consideration for decision-making within sports culture and future studies. The level of moral outrage is different between victims and bystanders and might change over time. It is recommended that moral outrage for victims of toxic leadership is to be examined further in the sports domain. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology BSc (56604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/107173 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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