Content area
Full Text
Hazing has been widespread throughout history as a form of initiation into fraternities, service clubs, schools, and sport teams. Legislation and anti-hazing programming have been in effect for a number of years to reduce the negative effects and occurrence of sport hazing (MacLachlan, 2000). Although hazing is illegal in most states, some contend that hazing continues for a number of social reasons that serve important team functions such as enhancing team cohesion. The purpose of this research was to evaluate the contention that hazing is associated with enhanced team cohesion. Athletes (N = 167) completed a modified version of the Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ; Widmeyer, Brawley, & Carron, 1985), the Team Initiation Questionnaire (TIQ; Hoover, 1999), and a social desirability scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960). Results indicated that the more appropriate team building behaviors that athletes were involved in, the more socially cohesive they perceived their team to be. The more hazing activities they reported doing or seeing, the less cohesive they perceived their team to be in sport-related tasks. The results of this study suggest that the argument that hazing builds team cohesion is flawed. Hazing is associated with less, not more, team cohesion.
"Rites de passage," puberty rites, and other forms of initiation into tribal membership or adult status have existed throughout human history (Van Gennep, 1977). Although these behaviors may reflect abuse cycles in which victims become perpetrators (Nuwer, 1990; 2001 ; Ratnzy & Bryant, 1962), it has been suggested that these practices were functional in the adaptations of human groups to a mostly hostile physical and social environment (Jones, 2000; Weisfeld, 1979). Indeed, effortful or painful initiations may have been adaptive in the training of armies by complex societies, and it would appear to be another easy generalization to the setting of team sports, as athletic competition between various groups developed. Whatever the earlier history of these practices may have been, they are clearly manifest in modern times (Campo, Poulos, & Sipple, 2005; Finkel, 2002; Hoover, 1999). Known now as "hazing," the practice of subjecting initiates, whether to a fraternity, a service club, a school, or an interscholastic, collegiate or professional sports team, to effortful, painful, or embarrassing rituals has been widespread (Nuwer, 1990, 2001, 2006).
Due to a number...
