Competitive emotions in sport—a scoping review

Abstract

Any kind of emotions in sports play a significant role, especially in competitive situations, when it comes to performing optimally at a given time. Emotions can affect the physiological, perceptual-cognitive, or behavioral levels. Therefore, the focus of the present scoping review is to examine the importance of competitive (state) emotions of athletes. The literature search identified 1126 papers, from which 15 studies fit the inclusion criteria. These were examined in terms of their thematic focus: 1) emotions, cognitions, and anxiety; 2) emotions, performance appraisal, and stress; 3) emotions and performance goals; 4) differences in emotional expression in gender and performance level; 5) influence of causal attributions on emotions. Afterwards, the emotion measurement instruments used in the presented studies were considered and presented. In summary, the recording of competitive (state) emotions around the sporting event (before, during, after) appears to be an essential element of applied sports psychology, emotion regulation strategies based on it, and consequently optimal performance, even if limited validated questionnaires are available to the (German-speaking) sports psychological practice.