Optimism and athlete thriving: The roles of attribution of disciplinary coaching and mental toughness

Grounded in Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory, this study examined how dispositional optimism predicts athlete thriving through the sequential mediating roles of Attribution of Disciplinary Coaching (ADC) and mental toughness. A national sample of 610 elite Chinese athletes completed relevant measures. SEM with Bootstrap analysis (5,000 resamples) revealed that optimism directly predicted thriving (β = .19, 95% CI [0.077, 0.327]; H1). Functional attribution positively mediated this relationship (indirect effect = .11, 95% CI [0.059, 0.192]; H2a), while hostile attribution negatively mediated it (indirect effect = .02, 95% CI [0.002, 0.050]; H2b). Mental toughness also functioned as a significant mediator (indirect effect = .13, 95% CI [0.074, 0.239]; H3). Functional attribution and mental toughness together formed a significant sequential mediation pathway (indirect effect = .04, 95% CI [0.018, 0.082]; H4a), whereas the hostile attribution pathway was not supported (H4b). These findings identify causal attribution as a previously understudied cognitive mechanism linking optimism to thriving, and position mental toughness as a generative resource built through positive cognitive processing rather than a purely defensive buffer. Practical implications for attribution retraining and coach communication are discussed, with the acknowledgement that cultivating athlete psychological resources should complement rather than substitute efforts toward more supportive coaching environments.