بررسی ارتباط شوخ‌طبعی با استرس، اضطراب و افسردگی در تکواندوکاران لیگ برتر ایران

Training and education of sports psychologists usually focuses on mechanistic learning of intervention techniques. As a result, further investigation of personal skills and qualities is necessary. One of these skills/qualities is the use of humor, which in clinical psychology helps to develop and improve the basic conditions of counseling. So, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between humor and stress, anxiety, and depression in taekwondo athletes of Iran's premier league. The applied research was descriptive-correlational in terms of type based on structural equation modeling. The participants included the elite taekwondo athletes of Iran's premier men's and women's league, the number of these people was announced to be 150 by an inquiry from the Taekwondo Federation. Finally, the data were collected by the available method from male and female taekwondo athletes who were members of the country's premier taekwondo league teams in 2023. Two questionnaires of humor and the stress, anxiety, and depression scale were used to collect data. The results showed that there is a negative and significant correlation between humor and stress (0.56), humor and anxiety (0.52), and humor and depression (0.50) in athletes. Also, 68% of variance changes in stress, anxiety, and depression were related to humor. Finally, the structural model of the study based on the relationship between humor and stress, anxiety, and depression had a good fit. Therefore, it can be said that the use of humor can reduce negative emotions such as stress, anxiety and depression in athletes and thus improve their sports performance. Such results are important for athletes, coaches, sports managers and other people who are somehow related to sports.