BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1636826
This article is part of the Research TopicMental Health in Recreational and Elite SportsView all 26 articles
Competitive Stress, Cognitive Appraisal, and Coping According Athletes'
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universidade do Minho Escola de Psicologia, Braga, Portugal
- 2Universidade Catolica Portuguesa Centro Regional do Porto, Porto, Portugal
- 3University of Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom
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Understanding athletes’ emotional experience prior to competition is crucial for examining their adaptation to stress. Earlier research suggested anxiety impaired performance by disrupting tasks like information processing, attention, and concentration—leading to increased stress and perceived threat. Over time, focus shifted toward understanding how athletes' interpretations of anxiety could influence performance positively. This led to broader research into other emotions typically considered ‘negative’ (e.g. anger, dejection) and ‘positive’ (e.g. excitement, happiness). However, how these emotions influence performance and interact with intensity has been understudied. A total of 383 elite athletes completed a questionnaire 24–48 hours before a major competition, assessing overall stress, emotional intensity (excitement, happiness, anxiety, anger, dejection), emotional direction, cognitive appraisal, and coping strategies. A cluster analysis based on emotion intensity and direction identified three athlete profiles: ‘Emotionally Balanced’ (moderate intensity), ‘Facilitating Arousal Profile’ (mixed intensity, all emotions viewed as performance-enhancing), and ‘Low Arousal Profile’ (low emotional intensity). Despite differing emotional profiles, athletes reported similar stress levels before competition. However, those in the ‘Facilitating Arousal Profile’ reported greater challenge appraisals, perceived control, and use of adaptive coping strategies compared to others. These findings suggest that not just emotional intensity but also the perceived impact of emotions plays a key role in performance. These results have important implications for psychological interventions, emphasizing the need to consider both how emotions are experienced and how they are interpreted in the context of competition.
Keywords: arousal (of emotion), emotional profile, threat, challenge, Humor, denial, Active coping, Emotional support
Received: 28 May 2025; Accepted: 10 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nogueira, Morais, Mansell and Gomes. 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: A. Rui Gomes, Universidade do Minho Escola de Psicologia, Braga, Portugal
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