Motivational Styles: Examining the Impact of Personality on the Self-Talk Patterns of Adolescent Female Soccer Players

The purpose of this exploratory study was to (a) examine self-talk dimensions in sport, (b) identify whether motivation styles (MS) are represented in this sample (Burton & Weiss, 2008 Burton, D. and Weiss, C. L. 2008. “The fundamental goal concept: The path to process and performance success”. In Advances in sport psychology , 3rd ed, Edited by: Horn, T. 339–375. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. [Google Scholar]), and (c) compare profiles on self-talk dimensions and related constructs. A sample of 214 adolescent female soccer players completed a comprehensive questionnaire to identify motivational styles and self-talk patterns. Factor analysis results revealed four self-talk frequency and three effectiveness dimensions, and cluster analysis identified four MSs that generally supported predictions. Finally, multi-variate analyses of variance results found profile differences generally consistent with predictions, although success- outperformed mastery-oriented performers. Discussion focuses on future research directions.