title: Implicit beliefs of ability, approach-avoidance goals and cognitive anxiety among team sport athletes.
abstract: People's implicit beliefs of ability have been suggested as an antecedent of achievement goal adoption, which has in turn been associated with behavioural, cognitive and affective outcomes. This study examined a conditional process model with team sport athletes' approach-avoidance achievement goals as mediators between their implicit beliefs of sport ability and sport-related cognitive anxiety. We expected gender to moderate the paths from implicit beliefs of ability to approach-avoidance goals and from approach-avoidance goals to cognitive anxiety. Team sport athletes with a mean age of 20 years (163 females and 152 males) responded to questionnaires about their implicit beliefs of sport ability, approach-avoidance goals and sport-related cognitive anxiety. Incremental beliefs, gender and the interaction between them predicted mastery-approach goals. Gender also predicted mastery-avoidance goals, with females reporting higher levels than males. Mastery-avoidance goals, gender and the interaction between them predicted cognitive anxiety, with females reporting higher levels of anxiety than males. Entity beliefs positively predicted performance-avoidance goals and the interaction between performance-approach and gender predicted anxiety. The indirect effects also showed gender differences in relation to performance-approach goals. Taken together, our results suggest that coaches trying to create a facilitating climate for their male and female athletes may be wise to consider their athletes' anxiety and achievement goal patterns as these may affect both the athletes' well-being and performance.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Umeå University , Umeå , Sweden.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stenling
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hassmén
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Holmström
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D001007:Anxiety; D001076:Aptitude; D056352:Athletes / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D013177:Sports / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Motivation; anxiety; conditional process model; gender differences; team sports