Abstract EN:

The state of anxiety is one of the emotions the most frequently experienced by athletes in competitive contexts. As an existential emotion, it is expenenced in anticipation of a situation appraised as potentially threatening (Lazarus, 1999,2000). The consideration of a wide range of dispositional variables enabled to partially explain the elements that trigger the anxious feeling (Mellalieu, Hanton & Fletcher, 2006). On the other hand, the particular relationship between the person and the environment remains little studied. However, the transactional approach of the stress process (Lazarus & Folkrnan, 1984), widely evoked in psychology (Rolland, 1999), emphasises the necessary consideration of the configuration (Fletcher & Hanton, 2003) and the perception of the environment (Rosnet, 1999,2002) to understand the athletes' experience in stressfid situations. In the light of these references, and notably in the light of the mediating process of cognitive appraisal, the objective of this thesis was to analyse and mode1 the reciprocal relationships between the emotional experience and the competitive environment in which athletes taking part in individual head to head sports operate. Three quantitative studies have demonstrated the relevance of this questioning. In addition, they have reinforced the necessity to consider the transaction between the person and their environment in the situation of a sporting event and highlighted the fundamental function of the perceptions in context and of the cognitive appraisal in the comprehension of the anxious emotional process.