Effects of mental toughness on athletic performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Mental toughness (MT) is an important predictor of athletic performance with a growing number of studies examining the effects of MT on athletic performance. However, there is a lack of clear understanding regarding the exact effects. Therefore, we aimed to synthesise the extant literature regarding the MT-athletic performance effect by systematic review and meta-analysis. Using related keywords of mental toughness, sport, and performance, we searched ten major academic databases from January 2000 to August 2022. Results found that the 16 studies we examined showed moderate to high publication quality, moderate heterogeneity, low sensitivity, and low publication bias. Furthermore, using a random effect estimate-r, we found a moderate to a high correlation between MT and athletic performance, yielding an overall effect size of r = 0.36. Moreover, we found the MT-athletic performance relationship was moderated by age group (r = 0.20 for adolescents and r = 0.41 for adults); sports category (r = 0.73 for combat sports, r = 0.30 for ball sports, and r = 0.32 for endurance sports); sports type (r = 0.73 for individual sports and r = 0.21 for team sports); athletic performance measure (r = 0.33 for objective measure and r = 0.62 for subjective measure); and measure of MT (r = 0.56 for MTQ group, r = 0.32 for PPI-A group, r = 0.33 for MTI group, and r = 0.13 for others). We thus concluded that MT is a broad and multi-factored concept with diverse components in measures. We suggested future studies continuously examining the MT-athletic performance effect with updated measures.