Sport and Psychosocial Development

ecause sports and physical activities provide many interaction opportunities, they can accelerate socializa-tion, enhance coping abilities, and promote a healthy life style. The psychosocial development of 172 female and male athletes in individual and team sports and of nonathletic students was assessed in this study, using Hawley’s Measure of Psychosocial Development (MPD) with 27 subscales of positive, negative, result and total. Manova results indicated: Sports effect psychosocial development (p<0.004, f=1.866); gender has no effect on psychosocial development; the psychosocial development of the athletes in individual and team sports were the same. According to these findings, it seems the study of participation, cooperation, reciprocity and cohesion, especially task cohesion, is necessary in order to understand more fully the effects of team and individual sports on psychosocial development.