Implicaţii ale practicării sportului de performanţă în adolescenţă asupra agresivităţii şi modului de utilizare a strategiilor de coping.
Implications of the Competitive Sports Practicing in Adolescence on Aggressivity and the use of Coping Strategies.

Summary/Abstract: Our research was thought to identify some differences between the use of coping strategies and the dimensions of aggression at teenagers, depending on whether or not they practice sports at a high performance level. The sample was formed by 254 high school teenagers from the Western region of Romania, aged between 14 and 19. Of these teenagers, 127 are students at a high school with sports profile and they practice competitive sports (individual type: swimming, kayaking, canoeing, athletics, tennis, boxing, kickboxing, wrestling or weightlifting; team competitive sports: basketball, handball, volleyball, football), and 127 study at technical profile high schools and do not practice any sports. As working instruments, we used the Aggression Questionnaire (A), authored by M. Albu, C. Herbei, and C. Văsar, and the Cope Inventory, authored by C. S. Carver, M. F. Scheier, and J. K. Weintraub. The results of this study revealed at the high school students who practice competitive sports an increased propensity to manifest their aggression in a direct way, using physically destructive behaviors directed towards objects or other people, but, at the same time, a greater trend toward engaging in verbal aggressive behaviors directed to others. Also, we observed at these students a significant increase of the state of extreme irritation, the loss of self-control that involves a physiological arousal and preparation for aggression, compared to the teenagers who do not practice any sports. We noticed that the students who practice competitive sports use coping strategies focused on problem solving more often than their peers: planning, seeking social support for instrumental reasons, acceptance. Likewise, the investigated teenagers who do not practice any sport resort more than their peers from the other group to emotional coping – seeking social support for emotional reasons, focus on and venting of emotions, positive reinterpretation and growth – and also to strategies that are generally considered as less effective, like denial, alcohol-drug disengagement.

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