Relations between empowering and disempowering motivational climate with burnout, fear of failure and grit

Abstract

The coach-created motivational climate refers to the environmental factors that influence the athletes’ emotional, cognitive, physical and social experiences and could be more or less empowering. The present study aimed to determine the connection between the empowering and disempowering motivational climate (EDMC) with other variables, from several sports (328 males and 118 females; M age = 17.60 years; SD = 6.27) completed questionnaires assessing perceptions of coach-created motivational climates, burnout, fear of failure and grit. Structural equation modeling revealed that the empowering motivational climate is negatively related with burnout and with fear of failure. In addition, the disempowering motivational climate is positively related with burnout and with fear of failure. In turn, the grit dimension, perseverance of effort, was not significantly associated with burnout; it showed, however, a significantly negative association with fear of failure. The EDMCs were not related with grit-perseverance of effort and grit-consistence of interests. Overall, this study suggests that creating empowering environments can play a crucial role in mitigating emotional and physical exhaustion, as well as the fear of failure that athletes often experience in the context of sports.