Challenge and Threat: A Critical Review of the Literature and an Alternative Conceptualization.

In this article, the authors describe a new theory, the Evaluative Space Approach to Challenge and Threat (ESACT). Prompted by the Biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat (BPS: Blascovich and Tomaka, 1996) and the development of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (Jones et al., 2009), recent years have witnessed a considerable increase in research examining challenge and threat in sport.

From Mental Health to Mental Wealth in Athletes: Looking Back and Moving Forward.

Considerations of athletes' mental health are typically framed in the language of mental illness (Hughes and Leavey, 2012), a situation that contributes to stigmatization, denial, and the prevention of effective care. In this article, we provide a critical, narrative review of the extant literature on athlete mental health. Specifically, we begin by providing a brief synopsis of the extant literature on athletes' mental health, illustrating both what we know about (i) the prevalence of mental health issues in sport and (ii) variables contributing to help-seeking behaviors in athletes.

The influence of in-game emotions on basketball performance.

This study examined the influence of emotions on performance in basketball. Six female basketball players were videotaped in six games. Frequency of performance behaviours was recorded minute-by-minute and indices of successful (SGI) and unsuccessful (UGI) game involvement derived for each player.

The BASES expert statement on emotion regulation in sport.

Emotions experienced before and during sports competition have been found to influence sports performance. Emotion regulation is defined as the automatic or deliberate use of strategies to initiate, maintain, modify or display emotions (Gross & Thompson, 2007) and is proposed to occur when a discrepancy exists between current and desired emotions. Two distinct motivations to regulate emotion - hedonic and instrumental (in short, for pleasure or for purpose) - have been proposed (Tamir, 2009).

Giving yourself a good beating: appraisal, attribution, rumination, and counterfactual thinking.

How individuals respond to adversity is one component of mental toughness and athletes may manage the adversity of a defeat in very different ways. In this article we focus on four types of cognition (appraisal, attribution, counterfactual thinking, and rumination) that athletes may exhibit in the immediate aftermath of a competitive defeat. In particular we define each of these terms and present a "caricature "of each of the respective literatures, focussing on the prevailing trends and substantive findings.

Predicting race performance in triathlon: the role of perfectionism, achievement goals, and personal goal setting.

The question of how perfectionism affects performance is highly debated. Because empirical studies examining perfectionism and competitive sport performance are missing, the present research investigated how perfectionism affected race performance and what role athletes' goals played in this relationship in two prospective studies with competitive triathletes (Study 1: N = 112; Study 2: N = 321). Regression analyses showed that perfectionistic personal standards, high performance-approach goals, low performance-avoidance goals, and high personal goals predicted race performance beyond athletes' performance level.

Antecedents of emotions in elite athletes: a cognitive motivational relational theory perspective.

Cognitive motivational relational theory suggests that cognitive appraisals or core relational themes (a composite summary of appraisal components) represent the proximal determinants of athletes' emotions. Semistructured interviews with 12 current international athletes (1 woman and 11 men) ages 19 to 37 years (M age = 27 years, SD = 6.03), representing a range of sports (badminton, golf rugby union, athletics, archery, sailing, and snooker) explored the association between athletes' appraisals and emotions.