Motivation and the flow state in athletes of individual and team sports.

a systematic review

Abstract

The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic literature review of studies investigating the variables of motivation and flow state in individual and team sports. Searches were conducted in the electronic databases Scopus, Sport Discus, PubMed, PsycINFO, Science Direct, SciELO, LILACS, and Web of Science. The review included 13 studies published up to 2025; the selected studies were published from 1998 to 2025, using quantitative (84.6%), qualitative (7.7%), and both (7.7%) analyses. Among the instruments used, 92.3% of the studies employed validated questionnaires and 7.07% employed interviews. The samples included athletes of both sexes, representing individual and team sports, participating at various competitive levels such as municipal, regional, national, and international. The results indicated that motivation and flow state were associated with emotional aspects (anxiety, quality of experience, self-efficacy, relaxation, goal orientation, perceived athletic ability, challenge and skill rating) and personal aspects (perception of success, autonomy, apathy, goal identification, achievement, affiliation, competence, and power). It is concluded that the variables motivation and flow state show a positive relationship and support the idea that autotelic personality is a factor that determines individual experiences of flow state. Another relevant finding is that the experience of flow state had positive associations with extreme sports, suggesting that athletes who practice these sports can experience flow. It was also possible to verify that sporting situations that satisfy the basic psychological needs of competence are more associated with flow state, thus demonstrating the relationship between intrinsic motivation and flow state in sport.