ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1592356
This article is part of the Research TopicPsychological Factors in Physical Education and Sport - Volume VIView all 32 articles
Athletes' basic psychological need satisfaction and autonomous motivation: Differences between individual versus team sports
Provisionally accepted
- University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
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Self-Determination Theory (SDT) posits that the fulfillment of three basic psychological needs – autonomy, competence, and relatedness – is essential for fostering autonomous motivation, well-being, and optimal functioning. The present research aimed to extend current understanding of how sport modality (individual versus team) relates to these sources of autonomous motivation in athletes. Data were collected across two studies: Study 1 included tennis and volleyball players (n = 78), while Study 2 involved a larger and more diverse sample of individual and team sport athletes (n = 1137). Analyses of covariance revealed that individual sport athletes reported higher autonomy satisfaction. In contrast, team sport athletes reported higher relatedness satisfaction and, in Study 2 only, higher competence satisfaction. As anticipated, differences emerged in the sources of autonomous motivation rather than in the overall strength of autonomous motivation itself. These findings provide valuable insights into athletes' psychological need satisfaction profiles and offer a practical framework for implementing need-supportive coaching practices tailored to sport type.
Keywords: self-determination, Motive, autonomy, competence, Relatedness, support
Received: 12 Mar 2025; Accepted: 06 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Van Yperen. 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: Nico W. Van Yperen, n.van.yperen@rug.nl
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