Olympic weightlifting is a demanding sport that involves both physical and psychological factors. It is widely agreed that mental toughness or resiliency is a predictor of successful outcomes in sport. Several studies show that implicit theories, an individual’s often unspoken assumption about the stability or malleability of core personal qualities, are related to resiliency in sport and non-sport settings. The implicit theories model consists of two theories or mindsets: entity and incremental. An entity belief is an assumption that a core quality of a person is a fixed entity and is not malleable. An incremental belief is an assumption that a core quality of a person is malleable and can change over time. The present study examined the relationship between implicit theories, goal orientation, perceived self-competence, and resiliency in Olympic weightlifters.
Method:
Participants were 140 adults competing in the sport of Olympic weightlifting (98 males, 42 females, Mage= 31.01 years, SD= 10.904, age range= 18-71). Most participants were Caucasian, had competed at the local/regional level, and had been training in Olympic weightlifting for one to two years. A correlational design was used and data was collected online utilizing Qualtrics survey software. Predictor variables consisted of incremental beliefs, entity beliefs, task orientation and ego orientation. Perceived self-competence was tested as a moderator variable. The criterion variable was resiliency.
Analysis/Results:
Significant relationships were found between entity beliefs and resiliency as well as task orientation and incremental beliefs. A simultaneous regression found that entity beliefs negatively predicted resiliency as expected. However, incremental beliefs did not significantly predict resiliency. A linear regression found that task orientation significantly predicted incremental beliefs. Furthermore, a hierarchical regression found that perceived self-competence did not moderate the relationship between entity beliefs and resiliency.
Conclusions:
The present study extended previous findings that entity beliefs negatively correlated with resiliency to an Olympic weightlifting setting. The findings were in contrast to previous findings that incremental beliefs positively correlated with resiliency. It is possible that incremental beliefs only relate to resiliency when the likelihood of failure is high. The measure of resiliency did not assess for resiliency in situations in which it was made explicit that failure was highly likely. The findings were consistent with earlier studies that found task orientation to positively correlate with resiliency. Future studies should examine a more culturally diverse sample. Mental skills training involving decreasing entity beliefs and increasing task orientation could possibly improve sport performance.