The shame and its relations with the sports practice: a case study

Abstract

In this research our main objetive was to detect the main causes of shame (shame of exposition) in feminine voleyball players, checking the greatest shame incidences in diferent situations throughout this context. Eleven players of the Extension Project from the UNESP / Rio Claro / SP / Brazil university participated. They answered a questionnaire with 6 questions, and the results obtained were: the situations of shame “being incompetent in what I do” and “not being able to decide upon a situation” had been the ones that had presented greater incidence of percentage of appearance among the athletes, followed by the situations “I’m ashamed of putting myself into risk” and “I’m ashamed of being ridiculous during a volleyball practice”, and at last were “I’m ashamed of speaking to my team during a volleyball practice” and “I’m ashamed of speaking to my coach”. We concluded that the most embarassing situations presented among the studied athletes had been decurrent of the situations, respectively, shame-goal, shame-action and/or shame-standard, and at last, shame-pure and/or shame-action, as presented by the classification of Ives de La Taille. We considered that shame is a very delicated feeling when it’s expressed by the fear of exposition, and therefore it deserves greater attention by sports professionals in the scope of Sports’ Psychology.