IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ems/eureri/7118.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Psychological Benefits of Superstitious Rituals in Top Sport

Author

Listed:
  • Schippers, M.C.
  • van Lange, P.A.M.

Abstract

The current research addresses the psychological benefits of superstitious rituals in top sport, examining the circumstances under which top-class sportsmen are especially committed to enacting rituals prior to a game (ritual commitment). Consistent with hypotheses, findings revealed that ritual commitment is greater when (a) uncertainty is high rather than low, and (b) the importance of the game is high rather than low. Complementary analyses revealed that the state of psychological tension mediated both the effect of importance and uncertainty on ritual commitment. Moreover, players with an external locus of control exhibited greater levels of ritual commitment than players with an internal locus of control. The results are discussed in terms of the tension-regulation function of superstitious rituals in top sport.

Suggested Citation

  • Schippers, M.C. & van Lange, P.A.M., 2005. "The Psychological Benefits of Superstitious Rituals in Top Sport," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2005-071-ORG, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    • Handle: RePEc:ems:eureri:7118
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repub.eur.nl/pub/7118/ERS%202005%20%20071%20ORG.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Locus of Control; Psychological Tension; Ritual Commitment; Superstition; Top Sport;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L2 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • M - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics
    • M10 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - General
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ems:eureri:7118. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: RePub (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erimanl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.