COPE WITH SUCCESS IN SPORT

Abstract

A number of scientific studies in the field of sports psychology are aimed at revealing the reasons, factors and conditions, which lead to success. The other side of the problem – how we cope with success – remains underestimated. The effect of the subjective experience of success can lead to different behavior effects - from mobilization and psychic upsurge to self-reassurance, disorganization, and loss of activity. The consequences of success make the researchers examine their connection with different coping strategies. The aim of the present study is to examine how success is defined, how its determinants and consequences are interpreted, and what their connection with the applied coping strategies is. The research was done among 115 athletes, practicing different kinds of sport, divided into groups depending on their gender, age, and qualification. We used: 1) Specially developed scale for surveying the attitude to success; 2) Coping Orientation s to Problems Experienced scale – COPE –1 (Carver, et al., 1989), adapted for Bulgarian conditions and optimized for sports practice (Georgiev at al., 2003). Athletes define success mainly as confidence and assertiveness. Mobilization and belief in one’s abilities is dominant. The most important factors for success are good preparation and input efforts. There are some negative consequences with some of the athletes – remissness, insufficient efforts, enhanced emotional reactions. The leading ones are cognitively engaged coping strategies. There are significant differences depending on age, gender, and qualification. The dependences between the researched indexes were given. The obtained results and established regularities direct the attention to possibilities of control and regulation of the negative consequences in the process of preparation with appropriate purposeful, scientifically proven influences, part of which are the coping strategies.

Keywords

• success
• cope with success
• sport
• coping strategies