Mental health problems are still prevalent in sport, and their early symptoms often appear as nonspecific psychological distress. While research in the general population has unveiled both "dark" and "bright" sides of fantasy, knowledge is scarce regarding how sport fantasy proneness affects psychological distress. In this study, we examined the hypothesis that how sport fantasy affects psychological distress depends on athletes' perception of deflated reality. Using a sample of 397 British Universities and Colleges Sport players, we demonstrated a stronger support for the "mitigating hypothesis" (i.e., fantasy "mitigates" psychological distress as deflated reality increases) than the "magnifying hypothesis" (i.e., fantasy "magnifies" psychological distress as deflated reality increases), even after adjusting for athlete psychological strain. The findings suggest that sports fantasy is not necessarily a bad thing, and deflated reality may serve as a "catalyst" for sports fantasy. Future research should consider more proximal factors underlying sport fantasy and deflated reality for athletes' mental health.
Zhang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.