Recent Trends in Sports Original Research
Superstitious Rituals Among University-Level Men Athletes and Footballers: A Comparative Study
Abstract
Superstitious rituals repetitive, formalised behaviours that athletes believe influence the outcome of competition independent of their technical or physical preparation are a widely reported feature of competitive sport. This study examined whether the use of such rituals differs between two groups of university-level male sportspersons whose competitive demands differ in structure: footballers, who compete as part of an interacting team, and athletes (track and field), who compete largely as individuals. Sixty male sportspersons (30 footballers, 30 athletes) aged 18–25 years, drawn from Calicut University-affiliated colleges that had won medals at intercollegiate tournaments, completed the Superstitious Ritual Questionnaire (Bleak & Frederick, 1998), a 42-item, five-point Likert-type instrument spanning six subscales: Clothing and Appearance, Fetish, Pre-Game Activity, During-Game Activity, Team Rituals, and Coach. Independent-samples t-tests compared group means on each subscale and on the total score. No statistically significant differences emerged between footballers and athletes on any subscale or on the total superstitious-ritual score (all p > 0.05), indicating comparable reliance on superstitious behaviour regardless of whether the sport is team-based or individual. These findings suggest that superstitious ritual use in this population is better explained by shared competitive and cultural context than by sport type, and they support continued use of the Bleak and Frederick instrument for assessing ritual behaviour in Indian collegiate sport. Recommendations for extending this line of research to larger, mixed-gender, and multi-institutional samples are provided.
Keywords
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