Abstract
The aim of this study was to examine the effects of the motivational climate created by the coach and perceived by a group of young, high-performance handball players on their fear of failure and precompetitive anxiety. The study participants were 479 young handball players. The age range was 16–17 years old. Players were administered a battery composed of a Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire, a Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory, and Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2R, to measure the aforementioned theoretical constructs. Using structural equation modelling (SEM), the results showed that the handball players experienced high levels task-involving climate and moderate values of self-confidence. In contrast, players experienced lower levels of ego-involving climate, fear of failure, and cognitive and somatic anxiety. The obtained model shows that fear of failure positively mediates the association between an ego-involving climate with both cognitive and somatic anxiety, and negatively in terms of self-confidence. In contrast, fear of failure does not mediate the associations between a task-involving climate and both somatic and cognitive anxiety and self-confidence.
Highlights
In sport, physical and psychological factors that affect the athlete’s performance.While motivational factors play an important protector role in the long-term effects of regular sport practice on the psychosocial development of the athlete, the emotional responses provoked by anxiety can affect athletic performance [1], and a state of permanent anxiety can even become a determining factor in the relative or total abandonment of sports practice [2]
The aim of this study is to analyze how a motivational climate generated by the coach affects the fear of failure and the precompetitive anxiety perceived by handball players in regional teams
The results recently provided by Gómez-López et al [15] showed that except for fear of feeling shame, which was predicted by the peer ego-involving climate, all the aversive causes of fear of failure may be predicted by the coach climate
Summary
While motivational factors play an important protector role in the long-term effects of regular sport practice on the psychosocial development of the athlete, the emotional responses provoked by anxiety can affect athletic performance [1], and a state of permanent anxiety can even become a determining factor in the relative or total abandonment of sports practice [2]. Anxiety is a psychological response produced as a consequence of differences between the self-assessment of a person’s ability to respond to a specific situation (e.g., challenge, action) and that person’s actual ability to respond [3]. Anxiety exerts a self-regulatory influence against low levels of coping or motivation [6], which can set up adaptive effects which are suitable for short-term performance improvements [7]. Public Health 2020, 17, 592; doi:10.3390/ijerph17020592 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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