Optimismo y competitividad en jóvenes atletas de rendimiento

Abstract

Optimism and competitiveness are presented as two important variables to study in order to understand the psychological characteristics associated with the highest performance. This study attempts to analyze the differences in optimism and competitiveness in relation to: whether or not to sport practice, competitive level, age category, and sex. To do this, the Spanish version of LOT-R (Otero, Luengo, Romero, Gómez and Castro, 1998) and Competitivity-10 (Remor, 2007) questionnaires were applied to a sample of 148 athletes (75 men and 73 women) and 58 non-athletes (22 men and 36 women) with ages ranging from 14 to 17 years. As far as the optimism trait is concerned, the results indicate that athletes are more optimistic than non-athletes. There were no differences in relation to the competition level. The older high performance athletes were, the more optimistic they were compared to their younger counterparts, with males being more optimistic than females. With regard to competitiveness, high performance athletes are more competitive than amateur athletes. There were no differences in relation to age category, with males being more competitive than women. It is concluded that optimism is a construct mainly associated with the sport practice, while competitiveness discriminates athlete competitive level.