Adolescent Soccer Athletes’ Irrational Beliefs About Basic Psychological Needs are Related to Their Emotional Intelligence and Mental Health

Abstract

There has been a scarcity of research regarding the unique mental health risk factors that adolescent athletes face. The recently proposed Rational Emotive Self Determination Scale for Adolescents (RESD-A) has been suggested to understand some of the antecedent and associative factors of adolescent athlete mental health. The principal aim of this study is to examine the structural and criterion validity of the RESD-A in an athlete sample for the first time. To achieve this aim, two hundred and forty-two club level soccer athletes participated in the study. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to test the validity of the RESD-A’s factor structure. Partial correlation analyses with the subscales of RESD-A, emotional intelligence, and mental health scores were used to examine criterion validity. Initial results for the structural and criterion validity of the RESD-A with an athlete population are promising. The potential importance, limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

Intrinsic Motivation: Knowledge, Achievement, and Experimentation in Sports Science Students—Relations with Emotional Intelligence

“…Another of the psychological constructs that has been widely studied in sport psychology is emotional intelligence [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. Regarding the conceptualization of this construct, we find two major approaches that explain its general contributions: on the one hand, we find the mixed models, and on the other hand, the ability models.…”

“…However, focusing specifically on the relationship between emotional intelligence and intrinsic motivation, several studies have been conducted to gain a deeper understanding of the influence of emotional intelligence on motivation [35][36][37][38]. The study of these issues is considered highly important, which further justifies the significance of this research.…”

The role of irrational beliefs and motivation regulation in worker mental health and work engagement: A latent profile analysis

“…In contrast, irrational beliefs include demandingness (“I want to succeed, and therefore I must”), awfulizing (e.g., “it is not just bad to fail, it is awful”), frustration intolerance (e.g., “it is not just difficult to not succeed, it is intolerable”), and depreciation (e.g., “when I fail, it means that I am a complete failure”). Psychological ill-being is underpinned by irrational beliefs, whereas psychological well-being is underpinned by rational beliefs [ 13 ]. A meta-analysis of 83 studies (16,110 participants) reported medium effect size associations between irrational beliefs and symptoms of depression, anxiety, anger, distress, and guilt [ 14 ].…”