M. A. BESHARAT ET AL.
764
tions and situations, but sport self-efficacy expresses athlete’s
belief in his/her ability to perform specific sport tasks and skills.
This means that belief in just general ability might have a weak
effect on control and decrement of stress and negative emotions
in particular situation (sport competition), whereas belief in
specific ability would have a decisive effect on that particular
behavior. One can conclude from this probable explanation that
although self-confidence and self-efficacy are in the same di-
rection (Hardy, 1996; Hardy et al., 2004), they are different in
the intensity of their effects. Self-efficacy in a specific field
cause to a decisive effect on behaviors related to that specific
field and its accompaniment and coordination with self-con-
fidence reinforces this effect. Based on this, it can be said that
athlete’s self-confidence provides general framework for con-
trol and management of stress and sport self-efficacy particu-
larly helps athlete in specific field related to management and
control of sport stresses, better performance, and sport achie-
vement. In other words, self-confidence is a general construct
and self-efficacy is a specific construct.
The present findings may have important theoretical and
practical implications. At the practical level, research findings
can suggest the importance and necessity for noticing to mod-
erating variables such as self-confidence and sport self-efficacy
as effective factors on competitive anxiety-sport performance in
athletes. Understanding these psychological constructs as mod-
erating variables in athletes can be considered as an effective
step in preventing undesirable consequences of sport competi-
tion. Formulating training and intervention programs in order to
increase self-confidence and sport self-efficacy, particularly in
national and international competitions, is another action that
can be applied to moderate levels of competitive anxiety and
improve sport performance. At the theoretical level, the results
of the present study can be at the service of theories related to
emotions, emotion regulation, coping strategies and stress
management particularly in the field of sport psychology.
The findings of this study have several limitations. The
cross-sectional design of this study does not allow us to draw
conclusions about the directions of causality between variables
investigated. These data were based upon a sample of volunteer
athletes. This further undermines the generalizability of the
results. It must be pointed out that self-confidence and sport
self-efficacy might have different effects through their interac-
tions with other variables, such as type of sport (e.g., individ-
ual-team, contact-noncontact), to produce positive or negative
consequences. Future research needs to address this issue.
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