Social Support in Sports

In the last decades a great deal of research in health psychology has shown that emotional (encouragement), informational (advice), and instrumental (e.g. financial assistance) social support contributes to health. An influential explanation for why social support unfolds its positive effects is that it functions as a ”stress buffer“, which means, that it reduces the negative consequences of stressful events such as sport injuries, stressful competitions, and social stress on health. In a series of already conducted and planned studies, we again take a differential perspective and consider implicit motives as moderators. Therewith, we investigate for whom social support acts as a stress buffer and for whom it might even act as a stress amplifier.

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This line of research is primarily pursued by Julia Schüler and Zsuzsanna Zimanyi. This research consists of experiments and correlational field studies and is suitable for a Bachelor- or Master thesis. Students are encouraged to contact Zsuzsanna Zimanyi if they are interested in doing a thesis on this topic (contact).