ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicFootball Training and CompetitionView all 25 articles
From Strain to Strength Through Humor: Resilience in Professional Football Players
Provisionally accepted
AYDIN PEKEL1
Mehmet Behzat Turan2*
Vesile Şahiner Güler3
Mujahid Iqbal4*
Osman Pepe5Abdullah Arısoy5
İbrahim Dalbudak6- 1Marmara Universitesi, Istanbul, Türkiye
- 2Erciyes University, Kayseri, Türkiye
- 3Erciyes Universitesi, Talas, Türkiye
- 4Beijing Normal University, Bejing, China
- 5Suleyman Demirel Universitesi, Isparta, Türkiye
- 6Usak Universitesi, Usak, Türkiye
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Background: Athletes often face competitive stress, with resilience and coping humor as key resources to mitigate its negative impact on mental well-being and performance. Objective: This study aims to examine the relationships between psychological strain, resilience, and coping humor among professional Turkish football players, and to investigate the moderating role of humor-based coping in the link between strain and resilience. Method: This cross-sectional study involved 466 professional Turkish football players (2024-2025 season). Data were collected via the APSQ, BRS, and CHS, and analyzed using SPSS v22, which included correlations, regressions, and moderation testing with the PROCESS Macro Model 1 (5,000 bootstraps). Additionally, the Jamovi 2.6.2.0 Package program was used. Results: Psychological strain significantly predicted resilience, and coping humor showed a direct positive effect on resilience. Significantly, coping humor moderated the relationship between strain and resilience, such that the positive association was strongest at high levels of coping humor. Athletes with higher humor-based coping skills were likelier to transform psychological strain into resilience, while the effect was nonsignificant at low humor levels. Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that coping with humor strengthens athletes' resilience and amplifies the beneficial effects of psychological strain when interpreted as a challenge. Integrating humor-based interventions into psychological training programs may enhance football players' adaptive coping skills, resilience, and overall mental well-being.
Keywords: psychological strain, Coping Humor, Mental well-being, Football players, Sportpsychology
Received: 04 Sep 2025; Accepted: 05 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 PEKEL, Turan, Şahiner Güler, Iqbal, Pepe, Arısoy and Dalbudak. 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:
Mehmet Behzat Turan, behzatturan@erciyes.edu.tr
Mujahid Iqbal, mujahid@bnu.edu.cn
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