Gender, power orientation, and moral disengagement among elite volleyball athletes in Taiwan: A near-census multilevel analysis of individual and coaching predictors
This near-census multilevel study of elite Taiwanese volleyball athletes reveals that while men exhibit higher moral disengagement than women, this gender difference is fully explained by a stronger endorsement of power-oriented masculine traits rather than biological sex, suggesting that targeting power orientation is a key strategy for preventing interpersonal harm in sport.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the high-stakes world of elite sports, where victory is often the only metric that matters, a quiet psychological process can sometimes turn competitive drive into something harmful. This process is known as moral disengagement. It is the mental maneuver that allows an athlete to commit an act of aggression, bullying, or harassment without feeling the usual sting of guilt or self-reproach. Instead of seeing their actions as wrong, the athlete might convince themselves that the behavior was necessary to win, that the victim deserved it, or that the responsibility for the harm was shared by the whole team. Researchers have long known that men in sports tend to use these mental justifications more often than women, but a crucial question has remained unanswered: Is this difference because they are men, or is it because they have been socialized to value power, status, and dominance? Understanding the answer is vital because if the problem is simply about gender, prevention feels like a dead end. But if the problem is about specific traits that anyone can learn or unlearn, then there is a clear path to stopping harm before it starts.
A team of researchers in Taiwan set out to solve this puzzle by looking at the very top of the local volleyball scene. They did not rely on a small, random group of players; instead, they conducted a near-complete census, surveying 215 elite athletes from the country's highest-level enterprise and university leagues. This group included 129 men and 86 women, representing more than 90 percent of all active players at this competitive tier. The study was designed to be as thorough as possible, capturing data on the athletes' personal traits, their views on gender roles, and the gender of their coaches. By analyzing this entire population rather than a sample, the researchers ensured their findings reflected the reality of elite volleyball in Taiwan, free from the usual biases of picking only the most willing participants.
The results confirmed what many suspected but clarified the "why" behind it. The male athletes in the study reported significantly higher levels of moral disengagement than the female athletes. They were more likely to use mental tricks to excuse harmful behavior, such as claiming that a harsh tackle was just "tough love" or that hurting an opponent was a necessary part of the game. However, when the researchers looked deeper, they found that the athletes' biological sex was not a significant unique predictor of this difference once "power orientation" was included in the analysis. Power orientation is a specific set of traits that values dominance, status, and the idea that winning justifies the means. The men in the study scored much higher on these traits than the women. While the data suggested that power orientation might explain the gender difference, the study was not large enough to confirm this link statistically; the indirect path was positive but not statistically significant due to the limited number of teams. In other words, the evidence points to a mindset focused on power and status as a likely driver of rationalizing harm, but the study could not definitively prove that this trait fully accounts for why men score higher than women.
The study also uncovered a surprising detail about how these athletes think. While men and women differed on almost every way they justified bad behavior, there was one exception: the idea of "diffusion of responsibility." This is the belief that if everyone is doing it, no single person is to blame. Both men and women agreed with this idea to the same high degree. The researchers suggest this might be because Taiwan is a collectivist society, where the group is often seen as more important than the individual. In such a culture, the idea that "the whole team is responsible" might be a shared cultural script that overrides gender differences, making it a common rationalization for everyone.
Another significant finding involved the coaches. The study found that athletes who were coached by men reported higher levels of moral disengagement than those coached by women. This association held true even after the researchers accounted for the fact that athletes are nested within teams and share a common environment. Since the vast majority of these elite teams were led by male coaches, this suggests that the moral climate of the sport is heavily influenced by the gender of the leadership. The researchers are careful to note that this does not mean male coaches are inherently bad; rather, it likely reflects the broader culture of elite sports, which often rewards aggressive, status-driven behaviors. Female coaches, being a minority in this space, may cultivate different team environments that are less focused on these specific justifications for harm.
The researchers were also honest about the limits of their work. Because they measured everything at a single point in time, they cannot say for certain that power orientation causes moral disengagement, only that the two are strongly linked. Furthermore, because the teams were single-sex, the study could not perfectly separate the effects of gender from the effects of the coach or the team culture. The statistical power to detect the influence of the coach's gender was also limited by the small number of teams. Despite these constraints, the study offers a clear and actionable insight. It suggests that to prevent harm in sports, we should not focus on changing who the athletes are, but rather on changing the values they hold. By targeting the specific mindset that equates winning with the right to dominate, and by diversifying the coaching structures that shape team culture, the sport can address the root of the problem without stigmatizing any group. The path forward lies not in blaming men, but in reshaping the definition of success so that it no longer requires the suspension of moral judgment.
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