The homophobic jock might be more than just a stereotype, says a new study that links sports zealots with attitudes about gender and sexuality.
The recent study presented to the American Educational Research Association suggests that college students who are avid fans of their schools’ football and men’s basketball teams are more likely to have homophobic and sexist views than their non-sports fan peers.
The study’s authors surveyed 459 students at an unnamed college whose sports teams play in the Division 1 subdivision of the NCAA. The three surveys students took measured their degrees of support for their teams and their degrees of sexist and homophobic beliefs.
Researchers behind the study, Matthew A. Holsapple, an education scholar from the University of Michigan and Deborah J. Taub, an education scholar from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, found a positive association between students’ degrees of sports fandom and bigoted attitudes.
University women’s and gender studies professor Elizabeth Reis said she’s not surprised by the findings.
“It seems to me that what connects these things is hypermasculinity and susceptibility to peer pressure and irrationality,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Reis said that being a sports fan probably does not make a person sexist and homophobic, nor are all homophobes and sexists apt to watch men’s basketball and football.
Researchers concluded in the study that certain factors may have skewed the respondents’ answers to reveal less bigotry than is accurate.
Among the factors is the fact that respondents to the survey knew they were taking a survey addressing homophobia, while many studies have shown that the most homophobic are less likely to take such a survey. Additionally, at the time the surveys were administered, the major women’s basketball teams were out-performing the men’s teams, giving prominence to female athletics.
The study hasn’t yet been published, and until it is, athletic department spokesperson Dave Williford said he has no comment on the findings, but questions the methods used to obtain the data.
Max Siemers, vice president of the Pit Crew, also declined to comment.
Psychology professor Holly Arrow, who specializes in group dynamics, said that the diversity of the researchers’ sampling might be important in determining the validity of their conclusions.
She added that while correlated statistics may exist, they don’t always represent a causal relationship.
“As a scientist studying human behavior, one of the first things one learns about the topic of study is that attitudes and behavior are subject to a broad array of influences, and one should be very wary about making causal inferences without firm evidence,” she wrote in an e-mail.
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