Types of reaction in conflict and their relation to dominant mental state of athletes

Abstract

The work looks into two psychological phenomena important in sports — mental state at the personal level and types of response during a conflict. Theoretical significance is determined by the importance of studying them for the sake of understanding other more general problems, in particular, conflicts within sporting activity. The research was meant to be comparative supposing the following factors to be significant: a) specialization within one sport (individual and team sport); b) various sports (high coordination sports and games); c) regular sporting practice (athletes and non-athletes). The sample group included girls aged 13–16, highly qualified in callisthenics, synchronized swimming, volleyball and handball (the total of 69 girls) and non-athletes (23 girls). An extensive methodology, including psychodiagnostics, statistic data processing and structural psychological analysis, was applied for solving main research tasks. In the course of research, a direct impact of the mental state on the type of response during a conflict with minimal reverse influence has been discovered. The assertive type of response in sporting conflicts has proved to be predominant in all researched groups of athletes, being best manifested among individual athletes in high coordination sports. Specialization peculiarities within a certain sport are manifested in the way various characteristics of dominant mental states affect the choice of assertive type of response in a conflict. Analysis of different types of response among athletes and non-athletes revealed the ‘aggression’ type to be widespread among non-athletes, with ‘solution’ type being predominant among athletes.