Abstract
Combat sports and martial arts are often associated with aggressiveness among the general public, although data on judo and/or martial arts and aggressiveness seem to be unclear. This research aims to compare athletes who have trained judo for a prolonged time (minimum 5 years) and athletes from various team sports, primarily regarding the manifestation of aggression, but also regarding personality traits, emotional intelligence, and self-efficacy. Also, the potential predictive value of personality traits, emotional intelligence, and self-efficacy for aggression within subsamples of judokas and team athletes was tested. The research findings showed that professional judo athletes are characterized by a low degree of aggression, especially low indirect and physical manifestations of aggression. In addition, the personality traits Honesty-Humility and Openness to experience are well expressed, contrary to Emotionality and Extraversion, which are less pronounced. They are also characterized by moderate general self-efficacy. On the other hand, members of team sports produced the opposite results, as they are characterized by increased aggression, pronounced traits of Emotionality and Extraversion, somewhat less pronounced traits of Honesty-Humility, Openness to new experience, and less pronounced general self-efficacy. The percentage of explained variability of aggression is slightly higher in the subsample of team sports and constitutes 49.9% of the variability, while in the subsample of judokas it constitutes 47.8% of the variability of the criteria. Practical implications, limitations, and future research directions were discussed.
Highlights
Judo is a Japanese martial art that is widely recognized as an Olympic sport and it is the first martial art to be included in the Olympics in 1964
The research findings showed that professional judo athletes have statistically significant less pronounced indirect and physical manifest aggression compared to athletes from team sports (Table 2)
To check whether it is possible to distinguish judokas from athletes engaged in team sports, the method of canonical discriminant analysis was applied based on a set of variables that comprise aggression and its modalities, aspects of emotional competence, general and social self-efficacy, subjective assessment of general well-being, and personality traits according to the HEXACO model
Summary
Judo is a Japanese martial art that is widely recognized as an Olympic sport and it is the first martial art to be included in the Olympics in 1964. For 15 years the International Judo Federation together with National Federations, Ministries (Sports/Youth/Education), and National Olympic Committees have been conducting the Judo in Schools program. It is an extracurricular program widely supported across 49 countries. While team sports are highly appreciated and widely accepted in school curricula, with a documented positive impact on socio-psychological well-being (Zuckerman et al, 2021), the inclusion of judo raises many concerns even with the existence of scientific evidence that supports the relationship between martial arts practice and positive socio-psychological responses (Theeboom et al, 2009). The data associating judo and/or martial arts with aggressiveness seem to be unclear
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