Motivated and without Fear of Failure: The Strength of Basic Psychological Needs in Youth Spanish Athletes in Team Sports

Abstract

Connecting desires for achievement, the satisfaction of basic psychological needs and the perception of fear of failure is one of the most relevant questions in the understanding of negative mental responses in youth athletes. How to act with less fear is what every athlete seeks to feel to enhance their performance actions. This paper aims to shed light on a sample of 681 members of sports teams belonging to different Spanish clubs (391 boys and 290 girls), with a mean age of 16.2 years, and a high sports dedication (75.5% > 5 years of experience; 96.3% > two training sessions/week; 90.3% > 3 hours of training/week). The collected data used self-reports based on the tenets of achievement motivation, Self-Determination Theory, and fear of failure. Those aspects linked to task involvement were positively close to Basic Psychological Needs (BPNs), while those related to ego involvement moved away from task involvement and BPNs. Fear was associated positively and significantly only with ego, and negatively with the rest of the constructs. In the standardized direct effect, positive and significant associations were observed among all constructs except between an ego-involving climate and basic psychological needs satisfaction. The association between a task-involving climate and BPNs was significant in fostering relationships among group members, as well as in improving interpersonal cohesion, empathic understanding processes, and reducing fear of failure in youth athletes.

<p>Support for autonomy and fear of failure in Physical Education lessons. Differences between “gender and physical extracurricular sports _{[Apoyo a la autonomía y miedo al fallo en las clases de Educación Física: diferencias en función del género y la práctica deportiva extraescolar]}</p>

“…Los resultados demostraron que a medida que se incrementa la percepción de apoyo a la autonomía por parte del estudiante, se reduce el nivel de miedo al fallo experimentado por los estudiantes en las clases de EF. Estos resultados se ven también reflejados en estudios previos como el realizado por González-Hernández et al (2023) en un contexto deportivo con atletas jóvenes, en el de Huéscar-Hernández et al…”

“…Es por ello, que uno de los métodos que puede reducir el miedo al fallo de los estudiantes es el uso de conductas que favorezcan la autonomía, puesto que, ayudan a crear ambientes de aprendizaje mucho más agradables (Huéscar-Hernández et al, 2020). Numerosos estudios como por ejemplo el realizado por González-Hernández et al (2023) o el de Leptokaridou et al (2016) refuerzan la importancia de la implementación de estilos de enseñanza enfocados en el apoyo a la autonomía puesto que disminuye la aparición de conductas relacionadas con el miedo al fallo.…”

Cause-Effect: The Relationship between Role and Experience with Psychological and Physical Responses in the Competition Context in Soccer Referees

“…SE is related to physical and psychological health (Rosenberg, 1965) and positively associated with athletes' mental well-being due to its relationship with positive psychological (e.g., resilience) and emotional (e.g., fear, anxiety, depression, etc.) characteristics, and evaluation in stressful situations (Baumeister, 1993;González-Hernández et al, 2023). Athletes with low SE levels perceived sports competition as threatening, while those with high SE levels perceived it as demanding, obtaining a strong relationship between SE and PP (Muñoz-Arjona and Castillo-Rodríguez, 2020).…”