The Role of Passion and Achievement Goals in Optimal Functioning in Sports

Abstract

This study aimed to test the role of passion in the cognitive goals pursued in sport and the level of Optimal Functioning in Society (OFIS) derived from such sport engagement. A total of 184 competitive water polo and synchronized swimming athletes completed a questionnaire assessing their passion for their sport, achievement goals, and various scales assessing their level of OFIS (e.g., subjective well-being, relationship with their coach, sport performance, and intentions to continue in sport). It was hypothesized that harmonious passion (HP) would be positively associated with mastery goals while obsessive passion (OP) would be positively associated with mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. In turn, mastery goals were expected to positively lead to the four components of OFIS, whereas performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals should display less adaptive relationships with OFIS. The results of a path analysis generally supported the proposed model. As hypothesized, these findings suggest that HP leads to a more adaptive cognitive engagement in sport (than OP) that, in turn, fosters higher levels of optimal functioning.

Self-Esteem as a Mediator Between Passion and Academic Perfectionism for Postgraduate Students

“…This agrees with results that corroborate previous studies revealing that HP supports wellbeing evidences such as self-esteem (St-Cyr et al, 2021;Peixoto et al, 2021).…”

“…As defined psychologically, passion refers to time and energy spent by an individual on what he admires or likes and believes is important for him (Vallerand et al, 2003;Vallerand, 2008;St-Cyr et al, 2021). Vallerand (2010) notes that the concept of passion has had several definitions.…”

“…Each of these aspects generates a deep commitment to a specific activity in their own way, but they differ in regard to the way this passionate activity is merged into an individual's personality (St-Cyr et al, 2021).…”

The Role of Passion in Self-Oriented Versus Team-Oriented Decision-Making in Team Sports

“…In line with previous research, our results suggest that HP promotes a balanced road throughout sport engagement, allowing one to fully develop as an individual within a team environment [3,15,16,18]. In general, HP allows athletes to adopt mastery goals leading them to fully embrace the team orientation and a collaborative approach [24,25].…”

“…Research on the role of passion in the use of achievement goals has shown that HP for a sport leads to more adaptive mastery goals (i.e., trying to master the activity), while OP has been found to be associated with mostly performance-approach (i.e., trying to do better than others) and performance-avoidance goals (i.e., trying to avoid doing worse than others) [14][15][16][17]. The relationship between OP and mastery goals is less clear since past research has shown positive [15,16,18] or non-significant [17,19] relationships between these variables.…”