Chivalric Disposition and Attitudes to Sports Injuries: Combat Athletes and their Battle Scars

This study explores uptake of chivalrous values and potential interactions it may have with athletes’ attitudes towards injury. It focuses more specifically on combat sports that historically align with notions of chivalry and chivalric ideals. Adopting a novel conceptualization of chivalric disposition as a value-complex subject to cultural evolutionary principles, a sample of 81 Maltese athletes, balanced between combative and non-combative disciplines, was surveyed using bespoke scales to measure chivalric disposition and positive injury perception. The findings of an inferential statistical analysis revealed that while subscribing to chivalrous values appears to be ubiquitous among athletes regardless of gender or type of sport, traditional martial arts practitioners may do so to a slightly higher degree. The main finding was a modest but statistically significant correlation between chivalric disposition and positive attitudes toward injury. Combat athletes displayed significantly more positive injury perception, consistent with valorisation of injuries as badges of honour in this particular culture. Various interpretations of the findings are given from both critical sociological and positive psychological perspectives. In terms of gender, the findings show that men and women exhibit similar levels of commitment to chivalrous values, yet, positive attitudes toward injury appears to be uniquely masculine. Intrasexual competition strategies are proposed as a viable explanation in this respect. Avenues for future research are proposed with a view to continuing to develop a deeper understanding of chivalric disposition as a novel construct of interest for researchers in the social sciences, as well as those interested more specifically in the psycho-social aspects of competitive sport.