Abstract
Numerous studies have established that participation in regular physical activity provides physical, cognitive, and affective benefits to adolescents, but fewer studies have examined how athletic involvement might affect character, social, or religious developmental markers of psychosocial functioning. The purpose of this study is to examine the bidirectional associations between entitativity (group closeness), positive affect, generosity, and religiousness across time among adolescents and emerging adults involved in charitable marathon training. We collected data from 396 adolescents and emerging adults who trained for half/full marathons with a religiously affiliated charity team. Participants completed measures at three occasions over 18 weeks (pre-training, mid-training, post-race). We conducted cross-lagged path analysis of latent factors to study concurrent and longitudinal effects of intrinsic religiousness, positive affectivity, and entitativity on interpersonal generosity and fundraising. Participants who reported higher levels of pre-training generosity were more likely to experience positive affect during training, which predicted higher levels of post-race generosity. Likewise, the internalization of religious ideas, reflected in increased intrinsic religiousness during training, was associated with higher post-race generosity. Overall, results support the potential of charitable sporting events to promote positive psychosocial developmental outcomes.
Highlights
Sports are often presented as ‘character building’ activities in western culture
Given that charitable marathon training may be especially well-suited to promoting the moral formation and well-being of young people, the purpose of this study is to examine the bidirectional associations between entitativity, positive affect, generosity, and religiousness across time among adolescents and emerging adults involved in charitable marathon training
Following Lerner’s suggestions for Relational Developmental Systems research [9], we examine intrinsic religiousness, interpersonal generosity, positive affect, and entitativity in a cross-lagged path model to test for associations between these variables across three measurement occasions from pre-training to post-race
Summary
Sports are often presented as ‘character building’ activities in western culture (e.g., as narrated through films such as Chariots of Fire). Numerous studies have shown sports participation provides physical cognitive, and affective benefits to adolescent [1,2] and is associated with a range of positive outcomes including prosociality and character strengths in adolescents [3]. Work showing decrements in character strengths and morality in some sporting contexts [4,5,6]. Suggest that sports are highly contextualized, highlighting the need for greater specificity in examining outcomes of sport involvement. Not representative of all types of sports in which young people participate, training for charitable fitness events, including half or full marathons, is increasing in popularity among adolescents [7]. Charitable training organizations regularly present anecdotal evidence that people involved with a training team experience personal transformation through. Public Health 2020, 17, 686; doi:10.3390/ijerph17030686 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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