کمال گرایی، انگیزه خود تعیین شده و مقابله با استرس در میان ورزشکاران نوجوان

Objectives To investigate the sequence of relations between dimensions of perfectionism, autonomous and controlled motivation, and coping (Study 1) or exerted effort (Study 2) during training. Design Cross-sectional (Study 1), short-term longitudinal (Study 2). Methods In Study 1, participants were 333 Greek adolescent athletes (M age = 15.59 years, SD = 2.37) from various sports; they were assessed with respect to their dimensions of perfectionism, perceived competence, self-determined motivation, and sport-related coping skills. In Study 2, participants were 63 adolescent athletes (M age = 14.40 years, SD = 1.58) participating in a three-week summer basketball camp; they first were assessed with respect to their perfectionism, perceived competence, and self-determined motivation and then, for consecutive times after daily training, with respect to their situational self-determined motivation and the effort they invest during training. Results In both studies, structural equation modeling revealed that personal standards were positively related to both autonomous and controlled motivation and that concern over mistakes were uniquely related to controlled motivation. In turn, autonomous motivation, as compared to controlled motivation, was linked with better coping (Study1) and more effort (Study 2). Conclusion Athletes with high personal standards are more likely to report effective coping or to put more effort if they become (or remain) autonomously motivated. In contrast, athletes with concerns over mistakes are more likely to exhibit controlled motivation and, in turn, to report poorer coping skills or to put less effort compared to autonomous motivated athletes.

How do people in general and athletes in particular, cope with demanding tasks? How much effort do they invest in challenging situations? These are interesting questions because coping and effortful behaviors are necessary for athletes to effectively deal with demanding situations like preparation for an important game or the game itself. In this respect, previous studies have identified perfectionism as a likely antecedent of effective coping (e.g., Gaudreau and Antl, 2008 and Hill et al., 2010) because effective regulation of one’s behavior, and hence effective coping, may be due to one’s perfectionistic standards (Flett, Hewitt, Blankstein, & O’Brien, 1991). A useful theoretical framework to understand the associations between perfectionism dimensions and effective coping is the self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000). Indeed, several studies conducted in sports and physical activity contexts have evidenced that self-determined motivation is related to both perfectionism (e.g., Gaudreau and Thompson, 2010 and McArdle and Duda, 2004) and coping (e.g., Amiot, Gaudreau, & Blanchard, 2004). Interestingly however, only one study has adopted the SDT perspective to investigate, concurrently, the interplay between self-determined motivation, perfectionism, and coping (Gaudreau & Antl, 2008). We aimed to extend this line of research by examining to what extent quality of motivation as defined by SDT (i.e., autonomous motivation and controlled motivation – see Vansteenkiste, Lens, & Deci, 2006), could partly explain the relations between two dimensions of perfectionism (i.e., personal standards and concerns over mistakes), and coping (Study 1) or exerted effort (Study 2) among adolescent athletes. Herein we conceived effort as a manifestation of effective coping strategies (Tenenbaum, 2001) because coping implies effort and because athletes’ efforts during training or competition reflect coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). To get a better view of these relationships, we also took into account athletes’ perceived competence which is related to both perfectionism (McArdle, 2010) and coping (Skinner & Edge, 2002). Self-determined motivation in sports Self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000) assumes that individuals satisfying their psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness become (or remain) autonomous motivated. In contrast, individuals failing to satisfy these three basic psychological needs are expected to exhibit controlled motivation. Autonomous motivation refers to activities that athletes volitionally undertake because they either find them interesting and enjoyable (intrinsic motivation), or fully internalize them in their own self (integrated regulation), or internalize them to some considerable degree because they consider them personally important (identified regulation). In contrast, controlled motivation ( Deci and Ryan, 2000 and Ryan and Deci, 2002) implies motivated behaviors for activities that athletes are coerced to undertake because of some intrapsychic (introjected regulation) or interpersonal psychologically pressuring reasons (external regulation). Controlled motivation, as opposed to autonomous motivation, reflects low degree of self-determined motivation because behavior is governed mainly by mandates and directives rather than by one’s willingness and choice ( Ryan & Deci, 2002). Several studies in physical activity and sport contexts have shown that relative to controlled motivation, autonomous motivation is positively linked with desired outcomes such as self-reported intentions (Standage, Duda, & Ntoumanis, 2003), active participation during PE classes (Ntoumanis, 2005), extracurricular physical activity behavior (Hagger, Chatzisarantis, Culverhouse, & Biddle, 2003), self-esteem, health-related quality of life (Standage & Gillison, 2007), persistence (Pelletier, Fortier, Vallerand, & Brière, 2001), sportspersonship (Vallerand & Losier, 1994), daily well-being (Gagné, Ryan, & Bargmann, 2003), and less burnout (Cresswell & Eklund, 2005). One issue however, that has been remained relatively underexplored concerns the link of self-determined motivation to perfectionism and coping processes. Investigation of these likely links deserves further consideration because both perfectionism (e.g., Flett & Hewitt, 2006) and coping (e.g., Skinner & Edge, 2002) are also considered important determinants of motivational outcomes such as goal attainment and life satisfaction (Gaudreau & Antl, 2008) and positive and negative affect (Ntoumanis & Biddle, 1999). In this respect, SDT provides a helpful framework to better comprehend the psychological processes that may explain the relationship between perfectionism and coping processes (or exerted effort) in sport, and specifically, the indirect perfectionism–coping (or perfectionism–effort) relationship via autonomous and controlled motivation. Perfectionism and self-determination Perfectionism reflects the setting of excessively high standards of performance that coincides with disproportionately critical evaluation of one’s performance (Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990). Perfectionism can be either maladaptive or somewhat adaptive depending on whether the implementation of disproportionate high standards coexists with undue self-critical evaluation concerns (Frost et al., 1990 and Hamachek, 1978). Specifically, maladaptive perfectionism may imply concerns over mistakes, doubts about actions, socially prescribed criteria, and over-awareness of discrepancy between actual and expected high-level standards performance (Stoeber & Otto, 2006). In contrast, relatively adaptive perfectionism (i.e., more adaptive compared to concerns over mistakes but not always adaptive compared to absence of perfectionism– see Flett & Hewitt, 2006) involves, mainly, the setting of high personal standards. In their extensive review, Stoeber and Otto (2006) showed that compared to concerns over mistakes, personal standards are not always detrimental, presumably because strivings for attaining such standards also entail higher levels of competence beliefs (Stoeber, Hutchfield, & Wood, 2008). Instead, personal standards may be positively associated with desired motivational outcomes in educational settings (see Stoeber & Rambow, 2007), especially once concerns over mistake are statistically controlled for. Similar results were obtained from studies conducted in sport contexts. For example, relatively adaptive perfectionism dimension such as personal standards were positively related to hope of success and internal attributions for success (Stoeber & Becker, 2008), better performance (Stoll, Lau, & Stoeber, 2008), less burnout (Lemyre, Hall, & Roberts, 2008), and higher levels of mastery-approach and performance-approach goals (Dunn et al., 2002, Ommundsen et al., 2005 and Stoeber et al., 2008b), – although some studies showed that personal standards are associated to ego goals rather than mastery goals (Lemyre et al., 2008). In contrast, after taking into account individuals’ relatively adaptive perfectionism dimensions, maladaptive dimensions of perfectionism (e.g., concerns over mistakes) were found to be positively related to ego goals among athletes of various sports (McArdle & Duda, 2004) and to be inversely related to positive outcomes such as self-esteem (Gotwals, Dunn, & Wayment, 2003), goal attainment and performance satisfaction (Lemyre et al., 2008), and peer acceptance (Ommundsen et al., 2005). Collectively, these findings denote that different perfectionism dimensions can have different implications for athletes. An important question then is why do different dimensions have different implications in sport? One way to help answer this question is to understand the processes that may explain the relationship between perfectionism dimensions and outcomes. Considering that perfectionism has important motivational implications, it seems prudent to examine the role of motivational regulations (i.e., autonomous and controlled motivation) when investigating the relationship between perfectionism dimensions and coping or between perfectionism dimensions and effort1. A few studies have already showed a link between perfectionism and self-determined motivation. Using a sample of university students Stoeber, Feast, and Hayward (2009) found for instance that self-oriented perfectionism (i.e., an internally motivated form of perfectionism reflecting beliefs that striving for perfection and being perfect is important and is characterized by setting excessively high standards) and socially prescribed perfectionism (i.e., an externally motivated form of perfectionism reflecting beliefs that others have high standards for oneself and that acceptance by others depends on attaining these standards) were positively related, respectively, to more and less self-determined motivation and similar findings were obtained by Gaudreau and Thompson (2010) in a similar population sample. Likewise, only two studies in the sport context have examined to what extent perfectionism is related to self-determined motivation. McArdle and Duda (2004) were the first to investigate this issue in sport contexts. Using a sample of adolescent athletes of various sports, McArdle and Duda found personal standards to be positively correlated to both autonomous (i.e., intrinsic and identified regulation) and controlled motivation (i.e., introjected and external regulation) and concerns over mistakes to be positively correlated to controlled motivation (see also Gaudreau & Antl, 2008). This pattern of relations comes as no surprise because high personal standards may equally lead to either autonomous or controlled motivation depending on whether such personal standards are perceived as a challenge or as a should-be level of performance that one has to attain in order to prove one’s self-worth (DiBartolo, Frost, Chang, LaSota, & Grills, 2004). If perceived as a challenge, personal standards are more likely to act as intrinsic motivators because challenge-seeking is considered an aspect of intrinsic motivation (Chatzisarantis & Hagger, 2007). In that case, an athlete setting personal standards is expected to regulate her motivated behavior in an autonomous way. On the other hand, if personal standards are perceived as a requisite to attain or maintain self-worth, it is reasonable to assume that personal standards will act as restraints of one’s self-regulated behavior. In that case, an athlete is expected to regulate her motivated behavior in a controlled way, that is, to exhibit controlled motivation. With respect to concerns over mistakes, such concerns are more likely to induce internally psychological stress (and thus controlled motivation) as athletes with concerns over mistakes are more vulnerable to associate such concerns with contingent self-worth. If so, these athletes, are more likely to become (or remain) controlled motivated (DiBartolo et al., 2004 and Ryan, 1982). Perfectionism, self-determined motivation, and coping It seems that the examination of the relationship between perfectionism and self-determined motivation could extend our understanding about the processes associating perfectionism and coping-related behavior. From the SDT viewpoint, autonomous motivation as compared to controlled motivation is assumed to lead to more flexible and positive stress appraisals (Ntoumanis, Edmunds, & Duda, 2009) and hence to higher levels of coping skills. As Ntoumanis et al. (2009) argued, self-determined motivated athletes are more likely to respond in an adaptive and flexible way upon stressful situations. This is because autonomous behaviors emanate from one’s personal volition and hence possess their own psychic energy. Therefore, since the true self is experienced as the source of action, behaviors, emotions, and cognitions work in concert leading to better executive function and to less self-awareness or conscious control (Skinner & Edge, 2002). In contrast, low self-determined motivated athletes are less likely to encounter the same stressful situations in an effective way, most likely because the underlying motive for their participation already exerts a psychological pressure on them. Hence, stressful situations are expected to overtax the appraisals of athletes with low self-determined motivation because they require more regulatory resources (Skinner & Edge, 2002), leading controlled motivated athletes to exhibit ineffective coping behavior. Consequently, one would expect a positive relation between autonomous motivation (but not between controlled motivation) and effective coping. Gaudreau and Antl (2008) provided initial evidence for such an interrelationship in the realm of sports as they showed through structural equation modeling (SEM) that autonomous motivation mediated the relation of personal standards to adaptive coping. This was an important contribution to the extant literature in perfectionism because it showed that different dimensions of perfectionism are differentially related to self-determined motivation. In addition, Gaudreau and Antl enriched the SDT-based literature as they showed how autonomous and controlled motivation is related to coping, an important precursor of emotional regulation (Lazarus, 2000 and Skinner and Edge, 2002). We aimed to extend this line of research in two ways. First, although the findings reported by Gaudreau and Antl (2008) were in line with SDT, the classification in their study of self-regulated motivation as self-determined (i.e., intrinsic motivation and identified regulation) and non-self-determined motivation (i.e., external regulation and amotivation) partly disguised any likely unique relations of controlled motivation (i.e., introjected and external regulation) to dimensions of perfectionism and coping strategies. We thus aimed to look at the patterns of relationships of autonomous and controlled (rather than non-self-determined) motivation with dimensions of perfectionism and coping. Second, because perfectionism is also associated with perceived competence (McArdle, 2010, Stoeber et al., 2008a, Stoeber et al., 2008b and Van Yperen and Hagedoorn, 2008) and because relatively adaptive dimensions of perfectionism (i.e., personal standards) may also entail high levels of competence beliefs (Frost et al., 1990), it is sometimes unclear to what extent the observed associations between dimensions of perfectionism and motivational processes and outcomes are driven by participants’ competence beliefs. Indeed, Frost et al. (1990) have shown a positive relation between personal standards and depression emerged only once competence beliefs were taken into accounted. Therefore, it is important to statistically control for perceived competence when investigating the relations between perfectionism dimensions and motivational processes and outcomes. Our research aimed to address this issue. The present research In the present set of studies, we focused on coping skills and effort, which for the purposes of the present research we treat it as a marker of effective use of coping strategies (Tenenbaum, 2001). We tried to address Ntoumanis et al.’s (2009) recent call for sport studies which will enhance our understanding about coping processes, thereby taking into account issues pertaining to individual’s volition and psychological freedom. Given that self-determined motivation has been associated with adaptive functioning (Skinner & Edge, 2002), it is reasonable to expect that self-determined motivation would be also positively associated with desired coping processes. Indeed, a few empirical studies have shown that autonomous motivation and adaptive coping strategies such as coping with adversity, peaking under pressure, concentration and confidence, goal setting, and effort are closely associated in either the educational context (Amiot et al., 2008 and Miquelon and Vallerand, 2006) or the sport domain (Amiot et al., 2004, Gaudreau and Antl, 2008, Pelletier et al., 1995 and Perreault and Vallerand, 2007). Despite the presence of similar, yet distinct approaches (e.g., Crocker and Graham, 1995 and Gaudreau and Blondin, 2002) to define coping skills, in Study 1 we defined, and assessed, athletic coping behavior according to the conceptualization proposed by Smith, Schutz, Smoll, and Ptacek (1995). This is because we deemed many aspects within this conceptualization (namely, coping with adverse situations, peaking performance under pressuring conditions, concentration, confidence and achievement motivation, and goal setting and mental preparation) to be especially salient during daily sport practice. Although we acknowledge that other researchers (e.g., Amiot et al., 2004 and Ntoumanis et al., 1999) used somewhat different theoretical frameworks, and hence instruments, to assess coping (e.g., Crocker and Graham, 1995 and Gaudreau and Blondin, 2002), we believe that the resultant relations among adaptive coping skills, self-determined motivation, and perfectionism would be essentially the same if we used another approach to assess coping skills. Indeed, previous studies have indicated that adaptive and maladaptive coping were positively related, respectively, to adaptive and maladaptive dimensions of perfectionism (e.g., Dunkley, Zuroff, & Blankstein, 2003) and autonomous and non-autonomous motivation (e.g., Amiot et al., 2004) regardless of the specific instruments that scholars employed in these studies. With respect to perfectionism, and similar to previous studies (e.g., McArdle and Duda, 2008 and Soenens et al., 2005), we focused on intrapersonal perfectionism. Specifically, we focused on two dimensions of intrapersonal perfectionism, personal standards and concerns over mistakes, as we were mainly interested in investigating to what extent perfectionism as a personality trait is associated to self-determined motivation and coping (Study 1) or effort (Study 2) at the within-athlete level. Similarly to Gaudreau and Antl (2008) we thus assessed to what extent two broad dimensions of dispositional perfectionism, assessed in a specific (i.e., sport) setting, are related to contextual autonomous and controlled motivation and coping skills in Study 1 and effort in Study 2. We made the following hypotheses. First, taking into account previous findings (e.g., Dunkley et al., 2003, Smith et al., 2007, Stoeber et al., 2009 and Wei et al., 2006), we hypothesized that personal standards would be positively related to autonomous motivation which in turn would be linked with high levels of coping and effort. We thus hypothesized that athletes with higher personal standards are more likely to report higher levels of autonomous motivation because personal standards are assumed to represent a relatively adaptive dimension of perfectionism (Gaudreau & Thompson, 2010). As stated above, athletes’ disposition to set high personal standards may reflect athletes’ challenge-seeking tendency. If so, then taking the SDT perspective it makes sense to presume that striving to attain a challenging task represents people’s tendency to satisfy their need for competence and thus their tendency to become (or remain) autonomous motivated (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Second, we expected that the pattern of relationships between personal standards, autonomous motivation, and coping behavior or perceived effort would be observed over and above the degree to which the athletes feel competent for their sport activity. Third, given the ongoing debate about whether personal standards do constitute an adaptive dimension of perfectionism (Flett and Hewitt, 2006 and Stoeber and Otto, 2006; see also Gaudreau & Thompson, 2010), we also explored whether personal standards would be associated with controlled motivation. Given that personal standards have been found to relate to some undesired outcomes, especially when these personal standards are tied with self-worth (in which case they are more likely to be conceived as markers of psychopathology rather than as high consciousness – see Flett & Hewitt, 2006), it is still likely that athletes with a disposition to set high personal standards do so because of some internal or externally pressuring reasons. We therefore, hypothesized that personal standards would be also positively linked with controlled motivation. Finally, we relied on previous studies (e.g., Gaudreau and Thompson, 2010 and Stoeber et al., 2009) and expected that concerns over mistakes (conceived herein as a maladaptive dimension of perfectionism) would be positively associated with controlled motivation and that controlled motivation would in turn be negatively related to coping skills or effort. Indeed, as Gaudreau and Thompson (2010) have recently demonstrated, concerns over mistakes may reflect an inadequately internalized form of perfectionism wherein these concerns act as controls over the person. If so, then it is reasonable to expect concerns over mistakes to be positively associated with controlled motivation.