The Role of Dynamic Social Norms in Promoting the Internalization of Sportspersonship Behaviors and Values and Psychological Well-Being in Ice Hockey

Abstract

Conducted among parents of young ice hockey players, this field experiment tested if making salient increasingly popular (i.e., dynamic) social norms that promote sportspersonship, learning, and having fun in sports, increases parents’ own self-determined endorsement of these behaviors and values, improves their psychological well-being, and impacts on their children’s on-ice behaviors. Hockey parents (N = 98) were randomly assigned to the experimental condition (i.e., presenting dynamic norms that increasingly favor sportspersonship, learning, and fun) vs. control condition (i.e., presenting neutral information). Parents’ motivations for encouraging their child to learn and to have fun in hockey were then assessed. Score sheets for the games that followed the study provided access to their children’s on-ice behaviors (i.e., penalties), as indicators of sportspersonship. Parents in the experimental condition reported higher self-determination for encouraging their child to learn and have fun in hockey compared to parents in the control condition. Furthermore, children of parents in the experimental condition had more assists. A mediation model revealed that the dynamic norms manipulation increased parents’ self-determined motivation for encouraging their child to learn and to have fun in hockey, which in turn, predicted higher psychological well-being (i.e., lower anxiety, more vitality). Together, these results provide support for the contention that highlighting increasingly popular social norms that promote sportspersonship, learning, and fun in sports, represents a promising strategy for creating positive social change in this life context.