ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicEmotional Intelligence in Youth Sports: Enhancing Performance, Coaching, and Well-BeingView all 12 articles
The Impact of Sports Participation on Reappraisal Use during Daily Challenges among Young Adults
Provisionally accepted
Wing Sze Lam1*
Leah H. Somerville2- 1Harvard Extension School, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States
- 2Harvard University, Cambridge, United States
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Background: In this retrospective study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between reappraisal use, an efficacious emotion regulation strategy, and sports participation among young adults. The primary objective was to determine whether sports participation in competitive environments is associated with reappraisal when young adults face adversity. Method: Young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 who lived in the United States were recruited through free online research portals and paid panel services. Upon confirming their consent statements, all participants were directed to the Harvard-hosted online Qualtrics platform to self-complete the questionnaire, which covered demographics, history of sports participation, stressful life events, use of emotion regulation strategies in daily life, and the likelihood of feeling depressed. Results: This study analyzed data from 431 respondents who provided usable data. We found that young adults who engaged in sports were significantly more likely to use reappraisal in the past three months and in daily life compared to those who did not participate in sports. In addition, individuals who participated in competitive sports showed a greater tendency to employ reappraisal compared to those who participated in non-competitive sports. This effect held when accounting for depression symptoms, which were higher in the competitive group compared to the non-competitive group. Conclusion: Participation in sports, particularly competitive sports, is associated with more frequent use of reappraisal to manage emotions among young adults. Future research should examine the relationship between these variables to ascertain whether participation in sports influences the use of reappraisal techniques or if the ability to employ reappraisal skills impacts the decision to engage in competitive sports. Furthermore, it is essential to explore whether other factors may mediate the relationship between these two variables.
Keywords: competition, Depression, early adulthood, Emotion Regulation, reappraisal, Sports participation, young adults
Received: 10 Sep 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lam and Somerville. 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: Wing Sze Lam
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