مقابله ورزشکاران در طی یک رقابت: ارتباط راهبردهای مقابله ای با احساس مثبت، احساس منفی و اختلاف عملکرد - هدف

Objectives: This study examined the changes in athletes' coping and affect across the phases of a sport competition and the extent to which performance–goal discrepancy (PGD) moderated these changes. Also, it explored the mediating role of coping strategies in the PGD-affect relationships. Method: Sixty-two French–Canadian male golfers, aged from 13 to 20 years, completed a French translation of the MCOPE (The Sport Psychol. (1995b), 9, 325–338) and the PANAS (J. Pers. Social Psychol. (1988), 54, 1063–1070) two hours prior, one hour after, and twenty-four hours after the competition. A subjective (The Sport Psychol. (1995b), 9, 325–338) and an objective indices were used to assess PGD. Results: In order to assess the moderating role of PGD in the temporal patterning of coping and affect, a series of PGD × Phase analysis of variance, with repeated measures on the last factor, were conducted. Results showed that positive affect and negative affect as well as behavioral disengagement, increased effort, active coping/planning, suppression, and positive reappraisal changed across the phases of the competition for athletes with high PGD whereas venting of emotion and humor changed for athletes with medium and low PGD. Multivariate path analyses were used to explore the mediating roles of coping in the PGD-affect relationship. Whereas active coping/planning and behavioral disengagement mediated the PGD-positive affect relationship during the competition, positive reappraisal mediated it at post-competition. Also, behavioral disengagement mediated the PGD-negative affect relationship during the competition. Conclusions: The moderating role of PGD on the temporal patterns of coping and affect implies that their dynamic nature might be far more complex than depicted by Lazarus and Folkman ((1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York: Springer). Also, the PGD-affect relationships and the mediating role of coping in these relationships outlined the need of considering self-referenced criteria of performance in studies of coping and affect.

Coping has emerged recently as a distinct line of inquiry in sport psychology and a good deal of research has been driven by Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) model of stress and coping. Thus, coping has been defined as the “constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person” (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, p. 141). A pivotal assumption of this model is that coping actions and emotional reactions of individuals are defined as highly contextual responses that change across situations and across different points in time during a stressful situation. Despite the dynamic nature of this definition and the acceptance of this assumption by several sport scientists (Cerin, Szabo, Hunt, & Williams, 2000; Crocker, Kowalski, & Graham, 1998; Hardy, Jones, & Gould, 1996), little attention has been devoted to the temporal patterning of coping and emotion in competitive sport settings. 1.1. Temporal patterning of coping and emotion According to Lazarus and Folkman (1984), stressful encounters such as public performances and academic and medical examinations are divided into phases (i.e. pre-, mid-, and post-situation) that place distinctive normative demands on the individual, so that their coping responses and emotional reactions might change across time. Studies conducted with American college students (Carver & Scheier, 1994; Folkman & Lazarus, 1985) partially support this assumption by revealing that the use of some coping strategies and the level of appraisal-related emotions (i.e. threat, challenge, harm, and benefit) change across the phases of a mid-term college examination. Interestingly, the use of task-oriented coping (e.g. active coping, planning, suppression of competing activities, acceptance, seeking instrumental social support) was more frequent before the exam whereas the use of emotion-oriented coping (e.g. wishful thinking, mental disengagement, seeking emotional social support) was more frequent during the period in which students waited for the announcement of their grades. As with academic examinations, sport competitions are divided into distinctive phases that can place specific physical, technical, and psychological demands and constraints on athletes (Cerin et al., 2000 and Hanin, 2000). Thus, coping responses and emotional reactions of athletes might change across the phases of a sport competition. In order to assess this assumption, Gaudreau, Lapierre, & Blondin (in press) have measured golfers' coping strategies across three phases of a golf tournament. The results of a doubly multivariate analysis of variance revealed that the use of wishful thinking, seeking social support, suppression of competing activities, behavioral disengagement, increased effort, and active coping changed across the phases of the competition. Although providing support for the theoretical assumption of Lazarus and Folkman (1984), results also showed that some coping strategies (e.g. positive reappraisal, mental disengagement, humor, and venting of emotion) remained stable across the phases of the competition. Furthermore, this study was highly descriptive and failed to account for processes that might have influenced variations of the coping responses across the phases of the competition. As such, the researchers discussed the possibility that non-attainment of performance goal might have accounted for their results and outlined the need for assessing this hypothesis in future studies. A good deal of research now indicates that athletes' emotions change across the phases of competitive sport encounters (Cerin et al., 2000). As such, several sport scientists have assessed the temporal patterning of unidimensional anxiety (Donzelli, Dugoni, & Johnson, 1990; Durtschi & Weiss, 1984; Huband & McKelvie, 1986; Sanderson & Ashton, 1981; Sanderson & Reilly, 1983) and multidimensional anxiety (Caruso, Dzewaltowski, Gill, & McElroy, 1990; Karteroliotis & Gill, 1987) across the phases of a sport competition. Basically this research has revealed that physiological measures of activation (heart rate and blood pressure; Karteroliotis & Gill, 1987) and psychological measures of state anxiety tend to increase as competition nears and to decrease during and after the competition. Additionally, success or failure in a competition has been found to moderate the temporal patterning of anxiety, with state-anxiety of successful athletes decreasing as a competition unfolds and with state-anxiety of less successful athletes increasing (Caruso et al., 1990; Durtschi & Weiss, 1984; Sanderson & Reilly, 1983) or remaining stable (Donzelli et al., 1990; Sanderson & Ashton, 1981; Sanderson & Reilly, 1983). Despite the recent claims for the need for investigating positive emotions in competitive sport settings (Hanin, 2000 and Jackson, 2000), no information is available on the pattern of positive affect across the phases of competitive sport encounters. Using the literature on state confidence as an heuristic (Caruso et al., 1990), it can be predicted that the level of positive affect should decrease from pre-competition to in- and post-competition in conditions of failure whereas it should remain stable or increase in conditions of success. 1.2. Relationship between coping and emotion Lazarus and Folkman (1984) have assumed the reciprocal relationship between coping and emotions of individuals during a stressful situation. More specifically, Folkman (1984) predicted that task-oriented coping strategies should correlate positively with positive affect whereas emotion- and avoidance-oriented coping strategies should correlate positively with negative affect. The results of several research conducted with college students (Carver & Scheier, 1994; Clark, Bormann, Cropanzano, & James, 1995; Folkman & Lazarus, 1985), children (Crook, Beaver, & Bell, 1998), AIDS-related caregivers (Billings, Folkman, Acree, & Moskowitz, 2000), and athletes (Crocker & Graham, 1995b; Ntoumanis & Biddle, 1998) have supported this assumption. Despite their worthiness, all these studies possessed some significant limitations. In several cases, participants were asked to report a situation encountered recently in a broad setting of their life (Billings et al., 2000; Crocker & Graham, 1995b) and then to assess their affective experience and their coping actions. Using this procedure, the delay in retrospective recall changed across participants, thus challenging to some extent the validity of the data (Smith, Leffingwell, & Ptacek, 1999; Stone & Kennedy-Moore, 1992). Also, the nature of the stressful situation was inconsistent across participants, so that the impact of situations on coping and affect was not strictly controlled (Stone, Greenberg, Kennedy-Moore, & Newman, 1991). As such, these studies did not take into account the possibility that the relationship between coping and affect might change across the phases of the stressful situation. Furthermore, these studies yielded little information concerning the mechanisms by which the coping-affect relationship took place and thus have failed to provide a test for the underlying factors that might have caused the relationship. 1.3. Looking beyond the coping-affect relationship Accounting for the methodological biases in previous studies, we decided to assess the coping-affect relationship at each phase of a sport competition. Furthermore, it was decided to explore the potential impact of a third variable (i.e. performance–goal discrepancy, PGD) in the coping-affect relationship. There is a growing acceptance that goals of individuals should be taken into account in order to understand their coping actions and their emotional experience in stressful settings (Carver and Scheier, 1998 and Lazarus, 1991). Whether objective measures of athletic performance outcome can predict positive and negative emotions of athletes (Biddle and Hill, 1992 and Vallerand, 1987), Cerin et al.'s (2000) have assumed that self-referenced criteria of performance rather than absolute performance outcomes should be use to predict athletes' in- and post-competitive emotional states. Based upon substantial theoretical and empirical grounds (Bandura, 1997; Carver & Scheier, 1998; Crocker & Graham, 1995a; Locke & Latham, 1990), it was decided to explore the pertinence of such a claim by looking at whether lower levels of PGD would produce positive emotions and whether higher levels of PGD would produce negative emotions. Furthermore, it was decided to explore the reciprocal association between PGD, a self-referenced criteria of performance, and coping strategies of athletes at each phase of a competition. Based upon the basic psychological skills (Murphy & Tammen, 1998) and the goal setting literature (Locke & Latham, 1990), it seems reasonable to assume that some pre- and in-competition coping strategies will influence the level of goal attainment of individuals, which in return will influence their in- and post-competition emotional experience. If both PGD and coping strategies can influence the affective experience of athletes, it is plausible that some coping strategies might mediate the relationships between goal attainment and both positive affect and negative affect. Whereas athletes dealing with high levels of PGD might rely more on avoidance- and emotion-oriented coping strategies, athletes attaining their goal might rely more on task-oriented coping strategies which might result in higher levels of positive affect. Understanding how athletes deal with performance setbacks in the course of and in the days following a competition, and how it relates to their in- and post-competition emotional states is of practical interest. As such, it can possibly lead to the identification of efficient coping patterns that will assist sport psychologists in their efforts to assist athletes how to deal more effectively with performance setbacks. Also, because the use of some pre- and in-competition coping strategies might favor both goal attainment and positive emotional states, it should be determined whether PGD mediates the relationship between coping strategies and affect. For instance, the in-competition use of task-oriented coping strategies might favor goal attainment and might in return enhance the level of positive affect and reduce the level of negative affect experienced by athletes. Investigating this hypothesis is of theoretical and practical interest. From a theoretical position, PGD might be the missing link between coping and affective states in achievement settings. From a practical position, knowing the influence of coping strategies on goal attainment might provide sport psychologists and coaches with empirically grounded tools for improving the coping skills of athletes. 1.4. Purposes of the research This study had four goals. The first goal was to replicate Gaudreau et al.'s (in press) study by assessing the temporal patterning of coping strategies and by testing if PGD moderates their respective temporal patterns. The second goal was to assess the temporal patterns of positive and negative affects and to investigate whether PGD moderates their respective temporal patterns. The third goal was to explore the mediating role of coping strategies in the relationships between PGD and each class of affect during and after competition. The final goal was to explore the mediating role of PGD in the respective relationship between coping strategies and each class of affect during the competition.