ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1677985
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychological dimensions of sport and active living: Impacts on health and performanceView all 6 articles
Mental Toughness as a Mediator Between Sports Psychological Skills and Athlete Burnout: A Buffering Model
Provisionally accepted
Zhao Zhang1*
Shaoran Yu2- 1Chengdu Sport University, Chengdu, China
- 2Deyang Vocational College of Technology and Trade, Deyang, China
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Athlete burnout is a critical issue in competitive sports, yet the mechanisms linking sports 3 psychological skills to burnout remain under-explored. This study has proposed a mental 4 toughness-mediated buffering model to address this gap. Data from 341 collegiate athletes were analyzed 5 using hierarchical regression and Hayes' PROCESS marco 3.5 (Model 4) with 5000 bootstrap samples for 6 mediation effects. Key findings have shown that: 7 (1)Sports psychological skills negatively predicted all three burnout dimensions (reduced sense of 8 accomplishment, devaluation, and emotional/physical exhaustion); 9 (2)Mental toughness partially mediated the effects of sports psychological skills on devaluation (β= -.135, 10 95%CI[-.249, -.026]) and reduced sense of accomplishment (β= -.159, 95%CI[-.261, -.062]). 11 (3)However, no significant mediation effect was observed for emotional/physical exhaustion, suggesting 12 distinct pathological mechanisms for this dimension. 13 These results have advanced existing burnout theories by demonstrating dimension-specific mediation 14 pathways, highlighting the need for targeted mental toughness interventions to mitigate devaluation and 15 reduced sense of accomplishment in collegiate athletes.
Keywords: Mental toughness, Athlete burnout, sports psychological skills, Mediation analysis, Collegiate athletes
Received: 01 Aug 2025; Accepted: 14 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhao Zhang, 240038133@qq.com
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