Abstract
Failure inherent to high-performance sport can precipitate emotional distress that can impair athletes’ performance and physical and mental health. Identifying factors that allow athletes to manage failure to sustain their health is critical. Self-compassion, treating oneself kindly in response to failure, may help athletes manage failure; it buffers against negative affective psychological responses, yet athletes often fear self-compassion. It is unknown whether the benefits of self-compassion extend to athletes’ physiological responses to failure and whether fear of self-compassion has an influence on psychological and physiological responses to failure, beyond self-compassion. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of self-compassion on athletes’ psychological and physiological responses when recalling a sport failure and determine if fear of self-compassion exerted unique effects, beyond self-compassion. Participants (n = 91; M age = 21) were university or national-level athletes. In this laboratory-based, observational study, athletes were connected to a multi-modal biofeedback system to measure physiological responding at baseline, during a stress induction (imagining a past performance failure), and during a recovery period. Physiological responding was assessed according to athletes’ high-frequency heart rate variability (HRV), indexing parasympathetic nervous system activity, during the stress induction and recovery phase. Next, to assess psychological reactivity, athletes completed a series of scales (behavioral reactions, thoughts, and emotions). Regression analyses revealed that self-compassion predicted athletes’ HRV reactivity to the stress induction (β = 0.30, p < 0.05). There was no relationship between self-compassion and HRV recovery. Further, self-compassion predicted adaptive behavioral reactions (β = 0.46, p < 0.01), and negatively predicted maladaptive thoughts (β = −0.34, p < 0.01) and negative affect (β = −0.39, p < 0.01). Fear of self-compassion explained additional variance in some maladaptive thoughts and behavioral reactions. Results suggest that self-compassion promotes adaptive physiological and psychological responses in athletes relative to a recalled sport failure and may have implications for performance enhancement, recovery and health outcomes. Further, addressing athletes’ fears of self-compassion may also be important in promoting optimal psychological recovery.
Highlights
Failure is common among high-performance athletes who pursue challenging goals and must maintain high performance standards (Smith et al, 2006; Davis et al, 2007)
Self-compassion was negatively associated with fear of self-compassion and self-esteem and fear of self-compassion was associated with self-esteem
In the case of high frequency heart rate variability (HRV), to complement existing self-reported findings that self-compassion promotes adaptive emotional regulation and psychological reactivity to failure and stress, among athletes
Summary
Failure is common among high-performance athletes who pursue challenging goals and must maintain high performance standards (Smith et al, 2006; Davis et al, 2007). These failures can be challenging for athletes to accept and cope with given the pressures they feel to perform well, combined with the significant investment of time and energy required to participate in elite sport. Many athletes report feeling a diminished sense of self and emotional distress following performance failure (Davis et al, 2007; Sagar et al, 2007; Sutherland et al, 2014) and these failures can precipitate depressive symptoms, anger and decreased vigor (Jones and Sheffield, 2008; Hammond et al, 2013)
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