Abstract
Athletes have to face several challenges during the sport season, and one of them could involve dealing with unattainable goals. In these situations, being able to reengage in other goals as a form of goal adjustment and in response to contextual demands is adaptive. According to previous literature, some aspects of the athletes’ social context, such as coach-created motivational climates, could encourage more adaptive responses in athletes, and so it is possible that these climates would also promote athletes’ goal regulation and goal reengagement. The purpose of this study was twofold: to analyze whether athletes’ perception of empowering and disempowering climates were related to their goal reengagement through the mediation of goal motives; and to examine the interaction between the two climates when they predict reengagement through athletes’ goal motives. Participants were 414 Spanish university athletes (49.5% male, 50.5% female) who belonged to different university teams, with ages ranging from 17 to 33 years old (M = 20.61, SD = 2.58). In the sport facilities, all of them completed questionnaires that evaluated their perception of empowering and disempowering climates, their goal motives, and their goal reengagement. Structural equation modeling (SEM) results showed that perceived empowering climate positively predicted autonomous goal motives, which in turn had a positive relationship with goal reengagement. Conversely, perceived disempowering climate positively predicted controlled goal motives, which were not related to goal reengagement. Thus, we only found support for the indirect relationship between perceived empowering climate and goal reengagement through autonomous goal motives. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that interaction effects between perceived empowering and disempowering climates were not significant in the prediction of goal reengagement through goal motives. Findings revealed that the perception of empowering climates promotes athletes’ goal reengagement when goals become unattainable via the increase in their autonomous goal motives. Conversely, when athletes perceive disempowering climates, they have more controlled goal motives, which are not related to goal reengagement. In addition, the study supports the need to educate coaches to create more empowering and less disempowering climates.
Highlights
Across the lifespan, people are continually pursuing personal goals in different contexts, which is a way for them to organize their behavior and even mature as individuals (Sheldon, 2014)
Goal disengagement, which implies investing less time and effort in unattainable goals, is adaptive because it involves less emotional distress and fewer health problems (Mens et al, 2015; Jobin and Wrosch, 2016). These findings suggest that disengagement protects individuals from negative psychological states associated with experiences of failure (Wrosch et al, 2007b), whereas goal reengagement has been related to both low levels of negative indicators and high positive levels of subjective well-being (North et al, 2014; Haase et al, 2021)
Literature has largely demonstrated that a self-regulation process that has been related to a wide range of adaptive outcomes in situations where important goals become unattainable is goal reengagement (Wrosch et al, 2003b)
Summary
People are continually pursuing personal goals in different contexts, which is a way for them to organize their behavior and even mature as individuals (Sheldon, 2014). In the process of pursuing valuable goals, people may encounter obstacles or changes in the context that make their goal attainment more difficult, sometimes threatening their wellbeing. In these situations, some people adapt and maintain their psychological health and well-being better than others, even when their important goals are frustrated (Barlow et al, 2020). Some past literature in different contexts has defended the importance of perseverance in personal goals and confidence in their attainability (e.g., Emmons, 1986; Taylor and Brown, 1988), more recent evidence has shown that in situations where goals become unattainable, it is more adaptive to give them up and start a process to search for and engage in other goals (Wrosch et al, 2003a; Wrosch, 2011). Whereas goal disengagement implies abandoning the unattainable goals, goal reengagement refers to the capacity to identify, commit to, and pursue alternative goals when current goals become unattainable (Wrosch et al, 2003b)
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