Athlete Perceptions of Intra-Group Conflict in Sport Teams

The study of conflict has been of primary interest in various fields such as organisational psychology for decades (e.g. Barki & Hartwick, 2004). In sport psychology, however, conflict research has been almost nonexistent (Lavoi, 2007) with few exceptions (e.g. Holt et al., 2012; Sullivan & Feltz, 2001). The importance of understanding conflict in sport and in groups, however, has been acknowledged because it has potentially serious implications for group outcomes (Lavoi, 2007). The present study investigated competitive sport athletes’ perceptions of intra-group conflict in sport. Ten intercollegiate athletes: (N=5 males, N=5 females; Mage=25.00, SD=2.87) participated in semi-structured interviews. Athletes perceived the nature of conflict to manifest itself in several ways including: (a) disagreements; (b) negative emotions; and (c) interference/antagonistic behaviors. In addition, conflict episodes were perceived to arise in task and social situations. The findings are discussed in terms of their contributions to current perspectives on intra-group conflict in sport.

Genetic architecture and sexual conflict in the life history of Drosophila

Because males and females of a species express many homologous traits, sex-specific selection on these traits can shift the opposite sex away from its phenotypic optimum. This mode of sexually antagonistic selection, known as intralocus sexual conflict (IaSC), arises when the evolution of sexual dimorphism is constrained by the two sexes sharing a common gene pool. As IaSC has been historically overlooked, many outstanding questions remain. For example, what is its contribution in maintaining genetic variation for fitness in populations? What characters underlie this variation in fitness? How does the selection history of the population influence the standing genetic variation? I used the model organism Drosophila melanogaster to attempt to resolve some of these questions. The first part of my Master’s project involved assessing the detectability of sexually antagonistic alleles in populations at different stages of adaptation to the laboratory. For the second part of my Master’s project, I looked for evidence of conflict during the development of body size, a well-known sexually dimorphic trait. While the first part of my thesis proved inconclusive, the second part revealed a surprising source of sexual conflict in pre-adult stages of D. melanogaster.

CLASHES IN CONFINEMENT: MEN’S GENDERED EXPERIENCES WITH CONFLICT IN CANADIAN PRISONS

This dissertation presents the results of in-depth qualitative interviews with twenty-three formerly imprisoned men regarding their lived experience with prison conflict and the pain of incarceration. The results suggest that prison is a gendered ‘total institution’ (Goffman 1961). The pains that men experience in prison are uniquely gendered in that the deprivations imposed by incarceration– deprivation of autonomy, liberty, goods and services, heterosexual sex, and security (Sykes 1958) – in the reverse, define idealized masculinity as it is currently socially constructed: self-reliance, independence, toughness or invulnerability, material and economic success, and heterosexual prowess. From these shared deprivations emerges a gendered code of conduct that perpetuates a hierarchy among incarcerated men by constructing violent masculinity as a subcultural norm. The results suggest that the gender code in prison represents a set of rules that create opportunities for men to police each other’s gender performance and make claims to masculine statuses. Because status is inextricably tied to survival in this context, many men feel pressured to perform violent masculinities in prison despite privately subscribing to a non-violent sense of self-concept. The results suggest that violence is an expressive and instrumental resource for men in prison. A gender theory of prison violence, methodological findings, theoretical implications, ethical considerations and the short and long term aftermath of violent prison conflict are discussed.