The Effects of Professional Athletes as Role Models on High School Students

Abstract

Professional athletes have been around for decades with major mainstream attention. With all of that attention, comes many young eyes who look up to professional athletes as role models. Athletes are not the only role models that the youth look up to, but they are an important one that many do look to up to. Professional athletes are humans who also make mistakes and do not always agree with their position as a role model. This leads to positive and negative athletic role models. The purpose of this synthesis was to review the literature on the effects of professional athletes as role models for high school students.