1. Introduction
Baseball is a highly popular elite and leisure sport in Korea and Japan [
1]. Baseball requires high concentration over long periods during play, and players can only perform well when they are physically and mentally healthy; findings indicate correlations between baseball players’ mood states and their performance during a game [
2,
3].
For Asian university baseball players, every game is an audition for any possible scouts for potential professional players, and exceptional athletic capability during every game is critical in determining amateur players’ future career paths [
4]. Advancement to a professional league is the goal of every university baseball player, and the pressure can have varying impacts on their mood states during games [
5].
Players frequently experience negative moods, such as tension and confusion, when they set high standards they do not believe they can meet, or when they think others believe they cannot meet them [
5,
6]. Such negative mood states have detrimental influence on athletes themselves, and their relationships with colleagues, coaches, and parents [
6]. Accordingly, it can be said that a multidimensional approach to understanding how moods manifest in performance during competition can provide very important perspectives [
7].
In this direction, sports psychologists confirm that mood states influence performance in competitive environments such as sports [
8,
9,
10]. Amateur athletes face constant pressure to achieve professional status, and this extreme focus can trigger potentially disruptive perfectionism; perfectionism, in turn, affects goal achievement, motivations, and motor performance [
11]. Therefore, understanding perfectionism in university athletes plays an important role in explaining its adaptive (positive) traits, such as improving athletic skills, boosting motivation, and enhancing performance, as well as its more maladaptive aspects, such as lower self-confidence and poorer performance [
12,
13].
However, athletes experience choking under pressure in a competitive environment [
14]. The choking is defined as ‘showing inferior performance even in the situation where rewards are given for performance at the highest level’ [
15] or ‘dramatic performance decline’ occurring in stressful situations [
16,
17,
18,
19]. In prior research, athletes who often face performance pressure have vivid feelings on the phenomenon and fear of choking under pressure [
5,
20], and skill decrements under pressure include not just simple poor performance, but also a form of paralysis that can cause athletes to perform worse than they are actually capable of [
15,
20]. Hall [
21] found that athletes have quite individual and subjective perceptions regarding the phenomenon of choking under pressure. However, there is still a lack of sophisticated understanding about the performance failure phenomenon of choking under pressure under critical situations [
22,
23]
Researchers propose two representative mechanisms to explain choking, distraction theory and explicit monitoring (or self-focus) theory [
14,
24]. In distraction theory, the pressure during execution can increase self-awareness, which increases attention to executing a skilled performance. On the contrary, the crux of explicit monitoring theory is how performers can control their own mood states and attention in high-pressure situations [
14]. Opinions differ on which of these two theories better explains the choking phenomenon, and studies are needed on choking in different tasks contexts, as well as according to skill level, individual mood, and sensitivities to perfectionism. Results from such research should provide useful knowledge to help athletes and coaches train to overcome the choking that can occur in pressure situations.
Toward the aim of offering clearer data on the phenomenon of choking among university athletes, the purpose of this study was to empirically investigate relationships among mood states, perfectionism, and choking, and to identify any mediating effect of perfectionism on the relationship between mood states and choking in Asian university baseball players in high-pressure game situations. We investigated these relationships by testing the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis 1 (H1). Mood states in extremely stressful situations affect perfectionism (p < 0.05).
Hypothesis 2 (H2). Mood states in extremely stressful situations affect choking (p < 0.05).
Hypothesis 3 (H3). Perfectionism in extremely stressful situations affects choking (p < 0.05).
Hypothesis 4 (H4). Perfectionism in extremely stressful situations has a mediating effect on the relationship between mood states and choking (p < 0.05).
4. Discussion
The purpose of the present study was to investigate relationships among mood states, perfectionism, and choking perceived by Asian university baseball players in extremely stressful situations during a game, and identify the mediating effect of perfectionism on the relationship between mood states and choking. Below, we present a discussion of our findings.
First, mood states had a positive effect on perfectionism. Sports inevitably involve competition, which triggers a wide range of mood states in athletes, and researchers have studied mood states to predict athletes’ behaviors, tendencies, and performance [
34]. In addition, mood is an important factor to improve athletes’ motor performance ability, as well as their athletic performance [
35,
36]. We confirmed the influence of mood states on perfectionism in the present study consistent with preceding studies regarding the relationship between mood states and behavior tendencies.
For instance, researchers have identified perfectionism as a behavior tendency with both positive and negative impacts [
37,
38,
39,
40,
41,
42], and here, we determine that mood states can determine a perfectionist personality. The double-edged sword of perfectionism is associated with motor performance ability with documented positive and negative impacts [
40,
43]. When this personality tendency trends toward the positive, perfectionism shows positive, rather than negative, impacts on motor performance ability. Follow-up researchers could investigate the impacts of predisposing factors other than mood states that can control perfectionism, and contribute to the development of psychological coaching methods to improve performance.
Second, mood states had no significant influence on choking in this study, which could be attributable to individual differences in personality traits [
44]. High-pressure situations can lead some players to choke, and can stimulate clutch performance for others, leading to inconsistent findings [
45,
46,
47]. Separately, Gill [
48], Gould and Udry [
49], Hanin [
50,
51], Kerr [
52], Lazarus [
53], and Males and Kerr [
54] established that stress, confusion, and tension alone are not sufficient to explain the complicated relationship between mood states and athletes’ motor performance ability. Overall, there are few empirical confirmations of a relationship between mood states and choking, and it could be fruitful to study how individual personality traits affect mood state responses, such as tension and confusion.
Third, perfectionism had a positive influence on choking. Perfectionism is a personality trait characterized by setting excessively high standards for performance, and striving for superior performance to that of others to win a game in competition with others [
55]. People with perfectionist tendencies have multidimensional personality traits characterized by overly critical evaluations of their own actions, and excessive sensitivity to mistakes [
56,
57,
58], and perfectionism is visibly evident among athletes. Empirical findings from both domestic and overseas studies on perfectionism have showed that excessively high perfectionist tendencies can cause or aggravate psychopathology-related factors, including depression, tension [
59,
60,
61], stress, fear, and anger [
62,
63,
64,
65]. Excessive perfectionism is also closely related to competitive state anxiety, burnout, and exercise stress [
11,
66,
67].
University baseball players strive for perfection during games because these serve as the only window for them to appeal to professional teams, and we believe that obsession with perfection can lead to choking. It is also the case that in Korean society, baseball players are rated on the binary criterion of being either a success or a failure, and this pressure could lead to negative perfectionism. Baseball players who have spent many years pursuing their dream of becoming professional players are likely to have limited options to earn a living if they fail to advance to a professional team, and they can feel guilty about their families’ sacrifices for their dream. These complicated mood states can cause athletes to redouble their efforts, and drive them toward an extreme level of perfectionism. Therefore, for players to perform without the pressure of perfectionism, family members and other people around young athletes lower their expectations for players’ success.
Lastly, perfectionism had a mediating effect on the relationship between mood states and choking. It is well-known that negative mood states, such as tension or confusion, do not necessarily lead to choking, but some athletes experience more serious choking in performance, informally known as the yips. Perfectionism directly affected choking in this study, and had an indirect mediating effect on the impact of mood states on choking.
Previous researchers have established that perfectionism affects athletic performance, and that athletes feel more pressure in real games than they do in practice, triggering heightened emotions [
40,
68,
69]. These results seem meaningful in that mood state and performance are not separable in some athletes: consistent, for instance, with So’s [
35] finding that emotional intelligence had a major influence on athletic performance.
The above findings suggest that counseling could protect athletes from manifesting extreme perfectionism, and, in turn, help make choking less likely under pressure, and that increasing the understanding and management of perfectionism, considering the distinct characteristics of baseball players, would be a valuable area for future research. In addition to the control and management of athletes’ psychological conditions, reflection is warranted on whether coaches’ teaching procedures and methods are appropriate, and whether the people around certain athletes, such as family members and relatives, have been careful with them in consideration of the players’ perfectionism. Such reflective attitudes in the people around athletes can help relieve athletes’ psychological burdens, and prevent manifestations of extreme perfectionism and choking, which can ultimately help athletes maintain high self-control of their mood states and perfectionism for better performance.
5. Conclusions and Suggestions
The purpose of the present study was to investigate relationships among mood states, perfectionism, and choking, and determine the mediating effect of perfectionism on the relationship between mood states and choking of Asian university baseball players in extremely stressful situations during a game. Based on our research results, we have the following conclusions.
First, mood states had a positive influence on perfectionism. Second, mood states had no significant influence on choking. Third, perfectionism had a positive influence on choking. Lastly, perfectionism had a (complete) mediating effect on the relationship between mood states and choking. In the present study, we reach the conclusion that perfectionism is one of causes that leads to choking in extremely stressful situations. Mood states are simple moods felt under pressure, whereas perfectionism is an athlete’s subjective perception of moods. Under usual situations, mood states do not affect choking or an athlete’s performance. However, if perfectionism is involved in mood states in extremely stressful situations, perfectionism can affect choking directly, and acts as a mediator to allow mood states to affect choking indirectly. This result has never been reported by preceding studies. This evidence strongly suggests that with perfectionism controlled better, choking can be controlled better in competitive situations. Accordingly, perfectionism evaluation can be an important psychological scale of the choking-susceptible athlete to overcome choking.
Future research should be directed towards the identification of other psychological mediator variables that may evoke choking or performance decrements. Extending and classifying our knowledge of potential mediator variables, such as competitive anxiety or state anxiety, which increase the likelihood of choking, can allow us to improve interventions for performance decrement under pressure.
We think that follow-up observation and qualitative research designed to confirm the cause of the derived result will be significantly meaningful for helping athletes overcome choking (yips), or in preventing injury resulting from a sudden performance change.
Comparative studies that include various cultural and situational factors related to Asian university players should also be conducted. Additionally, follow-up studies targeting other nationalities, age-groups, athletic performance levels, and sexes should be conducted.