Jean-Pierre Famose

Explanatory style and resilience after sports failure

Some athletes habitually explain bad events with causes that are stable in time and global in effect, and explain good events with causes that are unstable and specific. This pessimistic explanatory style constitutes a dispositional risk factor likely to lead to lower expectations of success, to increased anxiety, and to poor achievement. 62 participants (mean age 14 years) performed a basketball dribbling trial and were given false feedback indicating that they had failed. Consistent with prediction, in a second trial, the optimistic participants (N = 22) were less anxious (assessed by heart rate acceleration), more confident, and performed better than pessimistic participants (N = 20). A third group with a neutral explanatory style (N = 20) obtained scores which were between the two other groups.

Exerted Effort and Performance in Climbing among Boys: The Influence of Achievement Goals, Perceived Ability, and Task Difficulty

Abstract In achievement contexts such as sport, achievement goal theory assumes that an individuals major concern is to demonstrate competence. However, competence may be expressed in two ways: as task and ego involvement (Nkholls, 1989). Seventy-eight boys (M age= 13.6 years) performed Jive climbing courses, and the influence of achievement goals, perceived ability, and task difficulty on effort and performance was studied. According to the achievement goal theory: (a) task-involved boys exerted more effort and performed better than ego-involved boys; and (b) exerted effort was determined by an interaction of ones achievement goal, perceived ability (PA), and task difficulty. Ego-high PA boys and task-low PA boys exerted the most effort on the moderate course; ego-low PA boys exerted least effort on the moderate and very difficult courses. Finally, task-high PA boys exerted more effort on the most difficult courses. The motivational processes underlying these findings are discussed.

Culture and achievement motivation in sport: A qualitative comparative study between Maghrebian and European French adolescents

Within the framework of achievement motivation, the authors assessed gender and ethnic differences for preferential choices of social situations of achievement (e.g., academic, sport, art) and motivational goals pursued. A contents analysis of the essays of 202 pupils (boys and girls of Maghrebian and European origin) from a suburb of Paris was used. The subjects of Maghrebian origin tended to choose the school for social situations of achievement, while those of European origin appreciated the possibility for sport and art. Gender differences were more specifically pronounced for the Maghrebian girls. Concerning motivational goals, boys showed a less-marked orientation towards mastery goals than girls, whatever the social situation of achievement. Finally, the data analysis revealed that the nature of the social domain of achievement influences whether adolescents become intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.

When anxiety is not always a handicap in physical education and sport: Some implications of the defensive pessimism strategy

In this article we present a defensive strategy that individuals may use to cope with sporting events in that they present the possibility of failure and potential threat to self-esteem. Previous research has indicated that failures in sport and educational contexts are related to high anxiety and low self-estimates of ability. The defensive pessimism strategy lead anxious people to perform well in a risky situation by managing their anxiety as motivation. Defensive pessimists may use low expectations to cope with their anxiety so that it does not become debilitating. Decreasing strategic expectations may help individuals negotiate sporting events by intensifying reflectivity about possible negative outcomes, and increasing effort to reinforce the task focus. But defensive pessimists possess a cognitive flexibility that leads them to use their preferred strategy in risky situations and to select in their repertoire another strategy when failure is unlikely. These data showed that the effects of high anxiety and low expectations on performance may be mediated by the strategy use. That is why the users of defensive pessimism perform as well as strategic optimists, who report lower anxiety and higher expectations of success.

An experimental investigation of the determinants and consequences of self-handicapping strategies across motivational climates

Abstract The aim of the present study was to determine whether the use of claimed and behavioural self-handicaps and their correlates differed across experimentally manipulated motivational climates. Fifty-six competitive basketball players participated in the study. A crossover design was used, such that all participants completed the experimental task (i.e. a test of basketball skill) in both mastery and performance climates. Analyses of variance showed that claimed self-handicaps were used more in the performance than the mastery condition but only for the men. In addition, greater behavioural self-handicapping occurred in the performance than the mastery climate. Contrary to expectation, neither type of self-handicap was related to performance on the basketball task in either climate. These findings reinforce the conceptual distinction between claimed and behavioural self-handicaps and suggest that individual and environmental factors may differentially influence each type of handicap.