Global and sport-specific social physique anxiety experiences and athletes’ self-confidenceA preliminary study

Resumen

Introduction: Social physique anxiety (SPA) reflects a negative affective reaction derived from possibleexternal evaluations of the own body. Despite the ample body of research investigating SPA in exercisecontexts, this construct has been barely investigated in sport contexts. This study aimed to investigatethe relationship between both sport-specific and global SPA experiences and sport self-confidence.Method: The participants were 10 males and 51 females (Mage = 21.34, SDage = 6.08) team-sport athletes(basketball, 48%; volleyball, 38%; handball, 14%) competing at provincial (15%), regional (26%),national (57%) and international (2%) level. Variables of interest were assessed using validated psychometricinstruments. To explore the explicative power of sport-specific and global SPAS experiencesin explaining athletes’ self-confidence, two linear regression analysis using SPSS v.24 were conducted.Results: Sport-specific and global SPA were highly correlated (r = .86, p < .001). After controlling forage and competitive level, both sport-specific SPAS in the first model (β = -.398; p = .002) and globalSPA in the second model (β = -.482; p = .002) emerged as significant predictors of sport self-confidence.The models comprising sport-specific (F [3, 57] = 4.681, p = .005) and global SPA (F [3, 57] =6.771, p = .001) respectively explained a 19.8% and a 26.3% of the variance in sport self-confidence.Conclusions: Global SPA experiences may be strongly related to sport self-confidence than sport-specificSPA. Interventions aimed to improve sport self-confidence should consider addressing globalSPA experiences.