A comparative study on mental toughness between theist & atheist players

Abstract

Recent literature clearly shows that mental toughness is essential for peak sports performance. Mentally tough players respond positively to all pressure situations and that enables them to remain relaxed and energized to function effectively in stressful situations. The purpose of the study was to compare the mental toughness of Theist and Atheist players. There are lots of studies about mental toughness, but studies comparing mental toughness between theist and atheist players are very rare in the field of sports psychology. This study consists of 50 subjects, twenty-five in each group (Theist & Atheist). To measure the variable mental toughness among the different players who confessed to being Theist and Atheist, Dr. Alan Goldberg’s mental toughness questionnaire was administered. The statistical techniques used for analyzing mental toughness were descriptive statistics and independent t-tests, and the gathered data was calculated by using SPSS 16 Software. The current study revealed that there was no significant difference in scores of theists and atheist players. The p-value for the t-test of 0.152 for the two-tailed test with 48 degrees of freedom is 0.879 since this number is greater than our alpha level of 0.05. So, we don’t have sufficient evidence to say that the mean of mental toughness between theists and atheists is statistically significant at alpha level 0.05. On the basis of present findings, it can be concluded that mental toughness has no relation to theism and atheism.