Psychophysiological responses to sport-specific affective pictures: A study ofᅡᅠmorality and emotion in athletes

Objectives: The link between morality and emotion has received little attention in the sport context. To address this issue, we examined whether moral disengagement, empathy, antisocial behaviour and psychopathy were associated with emotional reactions to unpleasant pictures depicting players being hurt or deliberately fouled in a sport context. Design: A cross-sectional design was employed. Method: Team sport athletes (N 1⁄4 66) completed measures of moral disengagement, empathy, antisocial behaviour and psychopathy and then viewed unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant sport pictures while emotional reactions to the pictures were assessed using valence and arousal ratings of the pictures as well as electrocutaneous startle blink, heart rate, skin conductance, and evoked potentials. Results: Moral disengagement, empathy and psychopathy, but not antisocial behaviour, were associated with emotional reactions to the unpleasant pictures. Specifically, moral disengagement was related to attenuated startle blink responses and higher valence (less unpleasant) ratings, whereas empathy was associated with lower valence (more unpleasant) ratings. Psychopathy was associated with smaller startle blink responses and less heart rate deceleration. Conclusion: Our findings provide support for the link between morality and emotion in athletes. Moral variables may be more closely linked with specific measures of emotion, highlighting the utility of taking a multi-measure approach in the assessment of emotion. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Sport is a social context where antisocial behaviour, defined as behaviour intended to harm or disadvantage another individual, is commonly observed (Kavussanu, 2007, 2008). In non-sport contexts, a notable finding is that psychopaths, who frequently commit antisocial behaviours experience blunted emotions when they view unpleasant pictures (e.g., Blair, Mitchell, & Blair, 2005; Frick & White, 2008). Philosophers and theorists have long posited a role for emotion in morality (e.g., Bandura, 1991; Hume, 1777/ 1960; Smith, 1759). Although a number of variables have been identified as predictors of morality in sport (see Kavussanu, 2008), the relationship between emotion andmorality has received limited attention. The present study was designed to address this issue. Emotion in the picture viewing paradigm One way researchers have assessed emotion is by examining psychophysiological responses to unpleasant, neutral and pleasant pictures (Lang & Bradley, 2010). This methodology is based on the biphasic theory (Lang, 1985), which defines emotion as action dispositions organized around the two dimensions of valence and arousal. In this view, there are two motivational systems in the brain e appetitive and aversive e which reflect the valence dimension. Arousal is the degree to which the dominant motivational system is activated during a response. Processing unpleasant pictures primes the defensive system motivating a negative emotional state, whereas processing pleasant pictures is assumed to prime the appetitive system motivating a positive emotional state (Lang & Davis, 2006). Emotional reactions to these pictures are measured via self-reports that assess the valence and arousal dimensions of emotion (Bernat, Patrick, Benning, & Tellegen, 2006). Researchers using this paradigm also typically obtain measures of physiological responses. When these responses vary as a function of picture category, they are assumed to represent indices of emotion. In this study, we examined five such indices: startle blink, heart rate deceleration, skin conductance, and two event-related brain potentials. Startle blinks and heart rate deceleration reflect the valence dimension of emotion. Startle blinks are typically larger when * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (N. Stanger).