Health, Exercise, and Sports Sciences ETDs

Publication Date

7-13-1972

Abstract

The "Athlete's Dilemma,” (AD) is a two-person decision-making game involving two choices: 1) the choice of playing, or 2) the choice or not playing the third game of a paddleball match. If both players choose to play the third game, they both do better in tournament scoring than if both choose not to play, but the maximum payoff for each individual can be obtained only by choosing not to play the third game while the other person chooses to play. The AD was designed to serve as a research tool for observing cooperative and competitive behavior. The problem was to investigate the cooperative and competitive behaviors of physical education majors (PE), non-majors (NM), and varsity football players (FB). Forty-eight male volunteer subjects enrolled in the University of New Mexico were used. Four groups of twelve subjects each played round robin schedules. The experimental group play was arranged in the following manner: 1) PE vs. PE, 2) NM vs. NM, 3) FB vs. FB, and 4) PE vs. NM. An overall difference in group means was significant at the .01 level. Differences between the combined experimental group (PE-NM) and the football players; and between the combined group and the physical education majors were significant at the .05 level. The hypotheses that varsity football players would be more competitive than physical education majors and non-majors, and that physical education majors would be more competitive than non-majors were not supported at the .05 confidence level. Conclusions. The results of this experiment lead to the following conclusions: 1) The AD game is a functional research tool for the empirical observation of cooperative and competitive behaviors; 2) the environment in which an experimental game is conducted has some effect upon the manner in which subjects play; and 3) more studies must be made before generalizations about the AD play of independent populations can be made.

Sponsors

The Research Allocation Camnittee of the Graduate Student Association of the University of New Mexico

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Health Education

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Health, Exercise, and Sports Sciences

First Committee Member (Chair)

Armond Harold Seidler

Second Committee Member

Richard Jerome Harris

Third Committee Member

David Herbert Hunt

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