Study Sheds Light on Why Athletes Behave Badly
By Associated Press, September 27, 2005

Sharon Stoll knows why the sports page often reads like a police blotter – filled with news of illegal drugs, rapes, beatings and other crimes committed by athletes. Stoll, a professor at the University of Idaho, has spent her career studying the values and morals of elite athletes, and concluded that a great many jocks are deficient in moral reasoning, which governs honesty, fairness and responsibility.

“In sport we have moved away from honorable behavior,” Stoll contends, with more emphasis on winning at all costs and material rewards. Stoll’s conclusions are the result of a 17-year-study during which 72,000 athletes filled out questionnaires designed to measure their moral reasoning abilities. “The environment of athletics has not been supportive of teaching and modeling moral knowing, moral valuing, and moral action,” Stoll’s 2004 study found, in part because there are few consequences for immoral behavior in sport.

For full article, go to http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=2172121