Coping with acute stress in sport: Linking athletes' coping style, coping strategies, affect, and motor performance

The primary purpose of this experiment was to test the extent to which highly skilled table tennis players used coping strategies that were consistent with their coping style, both of which were categorized as approach and avoidance, in response to performance-related sources of acute stress on a table tennis task. Competitive Australian male table tennis competitors (N=36), ages 19 to 35 years, attempted to strike a table tennis ball projected automatically by a machine from across the table. The primary results indicated significant correlations between the athletes' approach and avoidance coping styles and their respective use of coping strategies (p<0.001) and that approach coping strategy was markedly related to increased negative affect (p<0.001). An approach coping style was a significant predictor of performance on the first block of 20 trials, whereas a combination of positive affect, avoidance coping strategies, and negative affect best predicted performance on the second block of 30 trials. Taken together, the results suggested that approach and avoidance coping appears to be a valid conceptual framework for future study of the coping process in sport. Implications of this study for improving coping effectiveness are discussed.