MORAL ORIENTATION AND GOAL ORIENTATION AS MEANS OF PREDICTION OF AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIORS IN HANDBALL PLAYERS

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between aggressive behavior and dimensions of moral orientation and goal orientation of handball players. Another aim of this study was to investigate the percentage used to display each type of aggression per area during a game. The participants were 18 young athletes aged 19 to 21 years of the Greek National Team, who participated in the World Handball Championship held in Thessaloniki in 2011. They filled the Moral Orientation in Physical Education Questionnaire (MOPEQ; Proios, 2010a) and Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSQ; Duda & Nicholls, 1992). The examination of players’ aggressive behavior was achieved via observation (video analysis) by means of a specific program SportScout. The results revealed no statistically significant relationship between aggression (hostile and instrumental), and moral orientation (deontological and teleological) and target orientation (task and ego). This is possibly due to the small sample numbers in the short space of a single tournament.