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Character Development

Character Development

There is little agreement on the precise definition of ‘character.’ In psychology, it is often used as a synonym for personality and refers to the collection of stable qualities of a person. It can also be used more narrowly to refer only to desirable qualities. For example, an athlete who overcomes personal adversity and great odds might be said to have character. Still others use the term even more narrowly to refer specifically
to the moral dimensions of a person. For example, an athlete who refrains from cheating might be said to exhibit good character. In keeping with this latter meaning, Berkowitz (2011) defined character as “the set of psychological characteristics that motivate and enable the individual to function as a competent moral agent” (p. 153). Over the past decade, scholars have sought to distinguish different types of character. Thus, Shields (2011) distinguished four interrelated forms of character: moral character (e.g., honesty, respect, fairness), civic character (e.g., passion for the common welfare, a participatory ethic), intellectual character (e.g., open-mindedness, truth-seeking), and performance character (e.g., persistence, loyalty). Of the various forms of character, moral and performance character have received the most attention
from sport psychologists.
The term ‘character development’ refers to growth along a trajectory from immaturity, where character may be highly inconsistent and externally driven, to maturity, where character is reflected in more autonomy and consistency. There are many theories of character development. Within the behavioral tradition, character development is conceptualized as the acquisition of socially valuable habits through rewards and punishments. Social learning theorists accent modeling, in addition to rewards and punishments. More recent social cognitive approaches, often associated with Bandura (1991), provide a more agentic view of learners who progressively gain control of their behavior through anticipatory selfsanctions. In constructivist theories, like those associated with Kohlberg (1969) and Haan (1986), character development forms out of complex person-environment interactions and reflects the person’s effort to construct meaning from their experience (Shields & Bredemeier, 1995). There is empirical evidence for each of these theories (Bolter & Weiss, 2016).