Abstract

OLIVEIRA, Sara et al. What could explain the psychological well-being and performance of young athletes? The role of social safeness and self-criticism. Aná. Psicológica [online]. 2022, vol.40, n.2, pp.191-203.  Epub Dec 31, 2022. ISSN 0870-8231.  https://doi.org/10.14417/ap.1913.

Literature has highlighted that it is important to explore factors that may contribute to athletes’ well-being and also to sports performance, especially in young athletes. This study aimed to test a model that hypothesized that athlete-related social safeness (feelings of belonging to the team) has an effect on the psychological well-being and performance through self-criticism.

This study sample comprised 164 Portuguese adolescent athletes of both genders, who practiced different sports.

The path analysis results confirmed the proposed model’s adequacy, which explained 52% and 28% of the variance of the psychological well-being and performance, respectively. Results demonstrated that athletes who presented higher social safeness levels tend to reveal higher levels of psychological well-being and perceived performance through lower levels of self-criticism.

These novel findings suggest the importance of adopting supportive and safe relationships between teammates due to their positive association with athletes’ mental health and performance.

Keywords : Psychological well-being; Sports performance; Self-criticism; Social safeness; Young athletes..

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