Sports Teams as Contexts of Cultural Change: The Roles of Culture and Social Identity in Social Dominance Orientations

Intergroup conflict and inequality are ubiquitous, but a promising pathway for change is at the individual level of social dominance orientations. Culture is one antecedent of social dominance orientations, thus a change at the cultural level could influence a change in social attitudes toward inequality. Ethnographic research has identified sports teams and their identification as a context for cultural change in athletes. The current studies sought to examine sports teams as cultural contexts that are conducive for influencing intergroup attitudes. Three cross-sectional surveys were conducted of athletes from different season times, sport types and competitive levels. Study 1 (N = 169) included elite team sport athletes before, during and after competitive season. Study 2 (N = 250) expanded to elite, lower elite and intramural level athletes in team and individual sports. The final Study 3 (N = 50) assessed offseason team sport athletes across competitive levels. Overall, athletes across all conditions demonstrated higher collectivism, verticality, and lower horizontality in sports contexts regardless of their team identification. Significant mediation of verticality and indirect effects of individualism and horizontality suggest that cultural values in local contexts can potentially influence the cultural antecedents of social dominance orientations, which could then impact intergroup relations.