Taking One for the Team: Violent Roles in Professional Ice Hockey

• In Event: 123 - Section on Social Psychology Refereed Roundtable Session (co-sponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions and Section on Sociology of Mental Health).
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 09. Social Psychological Processes in Sports/Athletics

Abstract

Past analysis has focused on understanding why two groups come into conflict with one another from both a structural and socio-psychological perspective (Papacristos 2009; Sherif et. al 1954), and when one member will participate in an act of individual violence on behalf of the group (Gould 1999). This article demonstrates that theories of labor specialization can predict who takes on a group’s violent responsibilities. A highly structured, well-documented, and frequently occurring social situation is used to examine the question of who assumes the role of violence in a group: fist-fighting in North American ice hockey leagues. My analysis empirically demonstrates the importance of two sets of skills, their tendency to be inversely correlated with each other, and the tendency of individuals to increasingly focus on one skill or the other over the career course. The analysis corroborates journalistic evidence of an informal group of players, “enforcers,” who tend to participate in a disproportionate amount of fighting. The analysis suggests that those who fight frequently do so as a means to both compensate for a lack of other skills while continuing to advance their career, and that organizations that need to perform at a higher level tend to funnel people into more specialized roles. While theories of intergroup conflict may predict why groups fight, theories of labor specialization explain how that violence is distributed across members of the group.

Author

• Antonio Sirianni, Cornell University