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The development of cynical attitudes towards elite sport is a core symptom of athlete burnout and has been associated with dropout from elite sport. To date, this phenomenon has mainly been studied by investigating explicit attitudes towards sport, whereas athletes’ automatic evaluations (i.e. implicit attitudes) that have been shown to influence behavior as well were not considered. This study aimed to compare explicit and implicit attitudes towards sport of young elite athletes with high (N = 24) versus low (N = 26) burnout symptoms. Using self-reported measures, general and athlete burnout symptoms were assessed. Additionally, a single-target implicit association test was administered to examine participants’ automatic evaluation of sport. Statistical analysis revealed greater emotional/physical exhaustion and sport devaluation in athletes reporting high compared to low burnout symptoms. Implicit attitudes towards sport did not significantly differ between the groups. Furthermore, no significant correlations were observed between different athlete burnout symptoms and implicit attitudes. Athletes with high burnout symptoms show a tendency to explicitly detach themselves from sport, thus fostering sport devaluation as a core symptom of athlete burnout. However, this process does not seem to be reflected in their implicit attitudes towards sport.
Method: The first study relied on focus group data collected from twenty-one team sport professionals (mean age = 34; SD = 11.65). Four hundred and fourteen adolescent athletes (mean age = 16.69; SD = 1.55) participated in the second study, whereas seven hundred forty-nine adolescent team athletes (mean age = 16.43; SD = 1.69) participated in the third study. For the latter two studies, team athletes were recruited across Italy, Germany and Greece and provided data on the new team measures. Only athletes participating in the third study provided data on doping intentions. Results: The findings of the three studies supported the empirical goals of the investigation and provided evidence for the factor structure, reliability and validity of the team instruments. Furthermore, multi group findings supported the hypothesis that the new instruments would have equivalent measurement and validity characteristics across the three European countries. The conclusions focus on the conceptual and practical implications of these findings. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Objectives: Anticipated affective responses influence decision-making processes in profound ways. The present study emphasized the role of anticipated regret and assessed the additive and interactive effects of anticipated regret in predicting doping intentions among adolescent athletes. Design: Survey-based, correlational. Method: Two hundred and sixteen adolescent athletes (M age = 17.37, SD = 1.68, 79.1% males) from team sports took part in the study and completed structured and anonymous questionnaires on social cognitive variables relevant to doping use, anticipated regret from engaging in doping and doping intentions. Results: Variance-based structural equation modeling showed that anticipated regret significantly predicted doping intentions over and above the effects of past use of doping substances and nutritional supplements, and other social cognitive predictors, and the overall model predicted 72% of the variance in doping intentions. Further analysis of interaction effects showed that anticipated regret significantly interacted with past use of nutritional supplements, and subjective and descriptive social norms in predicting doping intentions. Conclusions: Anticipated regret represents a theoretically relevant and important predictor of doping intentions in sports, and can have a protective role against pro-doping use intentions among athletes with past use of nutritional supplements. Regret also appears to be relevant to social norms and expectations, thus, highlighting for the first time a normative component in the process linking anticipated affective responses with behavioural intentions. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.