Procedural Justice, Attachment Style, Stress Appraisal, and Athletes’ Attitudes Toward Their Coach

Abstract

The study examined whether procedural justice may embody an external-situational resource, in addition to the attachment style as an internal-personality resource that improves athletes’ appraisals of stress and enhances their attitudes toward their coach. Eighty-one Israeli male athletes were questioned on the degree of procedural justice employed on their team, their attachment styles, their attitudes toward their coach, and how they appraised stress. Results showed that procedural justice was much more strongly associated with positive appraisals of stress as a challenge, and positive attitudes toward the coach than attachment style, and seemed to mediate the connections of attachment style and stress appraisal with the attitudes toward the coach. Findings integrate the cognitive-phenomenological model of stress and coping with the relational factors of the procedural justice approach and the personality theory of attachment and extend their validity to the field of sport.