The Power of Faith: The Influence of Athletes’ Coping Self-Efficacy on the Cognitive Processing of Psychological Stress

• Main Authors: Tengfei Guo, Yakun Ni, Qiaoling Li, Hao Hong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-07-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: coping self-efficacy; psychological stress; N1; FRN; P300; athletes
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01565/full

Coping self-efficacy (CSE) has a positive mental health effect on athletes’ ability to cope with stress. To understand the mechanism underlying the potential impact of CSE, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to explore the neural activity of the cerebral cortex under acute psychological stress in athletes with different CSE levels. Among 106 high-level athletes, 21 high-CSE athletes and 20 low-CSE athletes were selected to participate in the experiment. A mental arithmetic task was used to induce acute psychological stress. The results showed that high-CSE athletes responded more quickly than low-CSE athletes. In the stress response stage, the N1 peak latency of low-CSE athletes was longer than that of high-CSE athletes, and the N1 amplitude was significantly larger than that of high-CSE athletes. In the feedback stage, the FRN amplitude with error feedback of high-CSE athletes was larger than that of low-CSE athletes, and the P300 amplitude with correct feedback was larger than that with error feedback. The results indicate that high-CSE athletes can better cope with stressful events, adjust their behaviors in a timely manner according to the results of their coping, and focus more on processing positive information.