Coach humor styles and athlete commitment: a relational mediation model in team sport contexts

Merdan H. E., Çağlar E.

KINESIOLOGY, cilt.57, sa.2, ss.184-194, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, SSCI, Scopus)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 57 Sayı: 2
  • Basım Tarihi: 2025
  • Doi Numarası: 10.26582/k.57.2.5
  • Dergi Adı: KINESIOLOGY
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI)
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.184-194
  • İstanbul Gelişim Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Abstract

Humor, often viewed as a light-hearted communicative tool, also carries important relational significance in elite sport. Affiliative humor has the potential to build trust and cohesion, whereas aggressive humor may threaten relational safety and undermine athlete engagement. While humor has been widely studied in organizational psychology, its implications in sport coaching remain underexplored. This study examined how athletes’ perceptions of coaches’ humor styles influence motivational commitment through the mediating mechanisms of relationship quality—closeness, commitment, and complementarity—guided by Humor Styles Theory, the 3+1 Cs Model, and the Sport Commitment Model. Participants were 341 athletes (aged 18–35) from five team sports in Türkiye. Measures assessed perceptions of coaches’ affiliative and aggressive humor, coach–athlete relationship quality, and two forms of sport commitment: enthusiastic and constraint commitment. Regression-based mediation analyses tested indirect effects of humor styles on commitment through relational dimensions. Results indicated that affiliative humor was positively associated with enthusiastic commitment, fully mediated by athletes’ perceptions of commitment and complementarity, but not by closeness. In contrast, aggressive humor predicted lower levels of enthusiastic commitment, both directly and indirectly through weakened perceptions of commitment and complementarity. Neither humor style showed significant associations with constraint commitment. These findings suggest that affiliative humor may strengthens athletes’ motivation by reinforcing task relevant relational dynamics, whereas aggressive humor can undermines them. In performance-driven contexts, functional alignment may be more influential than emotional closeness. Coach education programs
should therefore encourage the intentional use of affiliative humor as a relational strategy to sustain athlete engagement and long-term commitment.