The Structure of Trait Pride in Sports: Focusing on Emotional Episodes of University Student-Athletes

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Pride is an emotion that may influence a competitive athlete’s sports performance and mastery. The purpose of this study was to develop a scale to measure the pride traits in sports (Trait Pride Scale for Athletes: TPSA) and examine the characteristics. University student-athletes (N = 463) completed the TPSA, focusing on subjective emotional episodes and other scales of important personality constructs including self-esteem, resilience, authenticity, and narcissism. The exploratory factor analysis of the TPSA items indicated a four-factor structure: (a) Relationship, (b) Athletic Self-Identity, (c) Endurance/Diligence, and (d) Superiority. Regarding the gender differences in the TPSA subscale scores, female athletes experienced significantly more pride in Endurance/Diligence. Internal consistency was verified by Cronbach’s alpha and supported the reliability. The TPSA scores were positively correlated with all of the other personality scales, confirming convergent validity. In addition, partial correlation coefficients by controlling for other personality variables indicated that Relationship, Athletic Self-Identity, and Endurance/Diligence had a positive correlation with authenticity and resilience, whereas Superiority correlated with self-esteem and narcissism. Findings provide initial insight into the structure of pride in sports contexts. Specifically, these findings suggest that the athletes’ proneness of pride is a multidimensional construct that involves not only intrapersonal factors but also interpersonal factors.