Interplay of Race, Gender, Competition Level, Athletic Identity, and Psychological Distress: The Moderating Roles of Social Support and Self-Compassion

Abstract

The current study consisted of 4,116 student-athletes (Mage = 19.84; women = 66.9%; White = 78.2%) to achieve two purposes when considering the disrupting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cancellation of collegiate sports. First, I examined the relationship between gender, race/ethnicity, competition level, and athletic identity. Though there were no significant differences across NCAA Divisional levels, I found a significant gender by race interaction with Black male athletes reporting stronger athletic identities compared to White male and female athletes as revealed by post-hoc analyses. Second, I examined the relationship between athletic identity and psychological distress and found that when social support and self-compassion are both low, there is a moderate, positive relationship between athletic identity and psychological distress for the White female athletes. Additionally, there were main effects for self-compassion and social support where higher levels were related to lower psychological distress among the White female athletes and Latino/a athletes. For the Black male athletes, there was a main effect for only self-compassion. There was a significant self-compassion by social support interaction for the Black female athletes and White male athletes, suggesting that when self-compassion is low, or high, there are higher levels of psychological distress experienced when social support is low. Implications of the findings, limitations, and future directions are discussed.