Perfectionism, pre-competitive worry, and optimism in high-performance youth athletes

Abstract

Different aspects of perfectionism have been associated with an array of adaptive and maladaptive cognitive, affective, and behavioural correlates in sport. However, relatively little is known about the links between athletes’ perfectionistic tendencies and their state-level thoughts and expectancies (i.e. mindset) in the lead up to competition. The purpose of this study was to explore relationships between perfectionistic strivings, perfectionistic concerns, and the future-oriented thoughts (i.e. worries) and expectancies (i.e. optimism) of athletes as they prepared to compete. A sample of 144 male youth high-performance Canadian football players (M age = 16.41 years, SD = 1.48) completed domain-specific measures of perfectionism, pre-competitive worry, and optimism 24 h prior to the start of an important competition. Canonical correlation (R_C) analysis produced two interpretable canonical functions. In the first canonical function, a canonical variate resembling a maladaptive profile of perfectionism (i.e. high strivings combined with high concerns) was positively correlated (R_C1 = .66) with a canonical variate consisting of high worry and low optimism. In the second canonical function, a canonical variate resembling an adaptive profile of perfectionism (i.e. high strivings combined with low concerns) was positively correlated (R_C2 = .48) with a canonical variate consisting of low worry and high optimism. The results highlight the importance of treating perfectionism as a multidimensional construct and indicate that the pre-competitive mindset of athletes (as reflected by the degree to which athletes worry and feel optimistic) appears to be associated with athletes’ perfectionistic orientations in sport.

Keywords:

• perfectionistic strivings
• perfectionistic concerns
• sport
• mindset

Notes

1 This current sample formed a sub-sample of participants (N = 1605) in a study conducted by Dunn et al. (2016) that examined the higher-order latent dimensionality of the Sport-MPS-2. The perfectionism data in this study were used by Dunn et al. (2016) for the sole purpose of assessing the latent structure of the Sport-MPS-2. None of the pre-competitive worry or optimism data has been reported in previous publications.

2 The bivariate correlation between worry-about-failure and worry-about-negative-social-evaluation was large (r = .77, p < .001) and therefore posed concerns regarding multicollinearity in the subsequent canonical correlation analysis (see Sherry & Henson, 2005). A principal axes factor analysis (with an oblique rotation) was therefore conducted on the correlation matrix of the 16 FWS items. A 3-factor solution was obtained in which the four failure items and the four negative social evaluation items loaded on a single factor and all eight items demonstrated excellent simple structure (i.e., pattern loadings > .63 on the same factor and loadings < .30 on the other factors). Consequently, the items measuring worry about failure and worry about negative social evaluation were collapsed into a single subscale labelled “worry about failure/evaluation” for all remaining analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a grant awarded by the Sport Science Association of Alberta.