Effects of self-discrepancy on emotional information processing in competitive tennis players

Findings suggest that elevated self-discrepancy increases the accessibility and endorsement of negative self-referent content and may predispose athletes to negative cognitive schemas, yielding accelerated processing of negative information and stronger attentional bias toward negative stimuli. This work highlights the importance of individual differences in self-cognition for emotional regulation and offers a mechanistic bridge from self-structure to attentional bias in sports psychology.