Fighting as a conquest: disruptive experiences and personal development among martial arts and combat sports practitioners

• Grant number: 23/01012-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): December 01, 2023
• Status: Discontinued
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Cristiano Roque Antunes Barreira
• Grantee: Yan Lázaro Santos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/12046-0 - Fighting as an achievement: disruptive experiences and personal development among beginner practitioners of martial arts and combat sports - Spanish-Brazilian, BE.EP.MS

Abstract

The objective of this research is to identify and comprehend, through first-person experience reports, how beginners of one (or more) of 08 types of Martial Arts and Combat Sports (MA&CS) experience the processes of change and personal development through disruptive events during the practice of their modality. This is a qualitative, exploratory and descriptive study that will take as a source of analysis the experience reports produced during a larger project entitled "For a theory of body combat: towards a Psychology of Martial Arts and Combat Sports" (FAPESP, 2019/1157-6). In the course of its realization, 131 interviews were conducted, with practitioner of 8 MA&CS modalities in the 5 regions of Brazil. In line with the empirical-phenomenological methodology, such interviews were conducted under the intentional positioning of suspensive listening - a method of subtraction of judgments that obstruct the access to the structure of the phenomenon. In this way, the work will begin with the transcription of the interviews with the beginners. It is noteworthy that this transcription will update the position of suspensive listening, since the moment of transcription requires a first comprehensive opening of the researcher with the reports. For the analysis, intentional crossing will be used, which objective is to treat the reports of the different interviews as variations of the lived experiences in order to gather the structural characteristics of the intentional experiences. Finally, it is also possible to perform a theoretical elucidation of contemporary scientific literature.