ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Pediatric Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1632707
This article is part of the Research TopicAttachment Theory in Educational PsychologyView all 4 articles
A study of the effects of different group involvement on children's sport behavioral choices: a group preference-based perspective
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nanchang Institute of Technology, Nanchang, China
- 2Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University, Nanchang, China
- 3Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, China
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In order to investigate the characteristics of children's sport behavioral choices in different group-involvement contexts and the role of group favoritism in this relationship, 280 children aged 3-8 years were recruited for a psycho-experimental study in two different experimental contexts. The results found that (1) in the in-group and out-group involvement situations, the rate of physical activity selection was significantly higher in the in-group than in the out-group, and there was a significant difference, indicating that there was an in-group preference in the selection of physical activities by children aged 3 to 8 years old. (2) There was a significant age difference in the low favorite physical activity choice in the parent-intimate peer involvement context. Negative rank was lower than positive rank in physical activity choice among 3-to 4-and 5-to 6-year-olds, suggesting the presence of parental attachment behaviors among 3-to 4-and 5-to 6-year-olds. In summary, it can be seen that children aged 3-8 years show a clear phenomenon of in-group favoritism in their choice of physical activity, which may be related to children's early social cognitive development and attachment behavior.
Keywords: Sport behavioral choice, Group involvement, in-group favoritism, Parental attachment, Peer attachment
Received: 21 May 2025; Accepted: 18 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fan, Xiao, Yang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hui Xiao, jxnc_xh@163.com
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