The Structure of Psychological Immunity among Youth Team Sports Players

Abstract The psychological immune system provides cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to stress and provides immunity to promote healthy development, which would be key in sports settings. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the psychological immunity system among adolescent team sports players. We aimed to explore the structure of the psychological immunity system to see how it is used. Furthermore, we examined the effects of training frequency as well as the differences between team sports. Our study included 338 team sports players (Mage = 12.60) of both genders (boys = 244; girls = 94). The players represented four team sports: basketball (95 players), handball (84 players), football (82 players), and ice hockey (77 players). Our self-administered questionnaire included sociodemographic and sports-related questions. The psychological immune system was measured using the Psychological Immune System Inventory Junior. After structural equation modeling, our study revealed that the psychological immunity model applies to team sports settings. However, Social Creating Capacity seems to weaken psychological immunity in this study. Furthermore, the correlation analysis revealed no significant connection between training frequency and psychological immunity. However, MANCOVA revealed significant differences among the team sports regarding the combined dependent variables while controlling for weekly training hours. This indicates, through follow-up ANCOVA, that ice hockey players who trained more reported higher levels of psychological immunity compared to athletes in other team sports. We believe that our study increases confidence in working with specific samples on psychological immunity, thereby enhancing our understanding of the psychology of sports.