Social support, social anxiety, psychological resilience, and antisocial behavior in sports among college students: a cross-sectional study

Introduction This study explored the relationship between antisocial behavior in sports among college students and social support, as well as the mediating mechanisms of social anxiety and psychological resilience on antisocial behavior in sports. Methods Using a simple random sampling survey method, we collected data from 1,421 college students aged 18-24 (female = 604, 42.51%) in Guangzhou and Zhaoqing, China. The Perceived Social Support Scale (PSSS), the Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior in Sport Scale (PABSS), the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RlSC) were utilized. Results The research demonstrates that social support negatively predicts antisocial behaviors in sports (β = −0.108, p < 0.05), with social anxiety serving as a significant mediator (β = −0.096, p < 0.05). Psychological resilience moderates three key relationships: between social support and social anxiety (β = −0.237, p < 0.05); between social anxiety and antisocial behavior (β = 0.173, p < 0.05); and between social support and antisocial behavior(β = −0.198, p < 0.05). Discussion To bolster social support, an integrated tripartite supportnetwork (athlete-coach-psychological coach) is recommended. Mechanisms such as structured event retrospectives may enhance psychological resilience, whereas mindfulness training and cognitive restructuring interventions could target social anxiety reduction, thereby potentially attenuating antisocial behaviors.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Frontiers in Psychology

• Publication date

  2025-09-02

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1656847PMID 40963796PMCID 12439672
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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