Differential effect of internal and external entrapment on athlete's well-being: The multilevel moderating role of grateful climate.

Prior research suggests that being entrapped in helplessness and an inability to escape aversive circumstances may undermine individuals' well-being. In the present study, however, drawing on gratitude-based perspectives, we propose that a team-level grateful climate may buffer the detrimental effects of entrapment on athletes' well-being. A three-year, six-wave longitudinal design was employed with 283 Taiwanese student-athletes (165 males, 118 females; M age = 16.72 years, SD = .47) nested within 62 sports teams. Multilevel modeling showed that external entrapment negatively predicted changes in both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being over time. In addition, a significant cross-level moderation effect indicated that teams characterized by higher levels of team-level grateful climate attenuated the detrimental association between internal entrapment and well-being over time. Notably, in teams with low team-level grateful climate, internal and external entrapment exhibited distinct patterns of association with well-being, suggesting differentiated regulatory mechanisms. These findings underscore the importance of considering both the type of entrapment and the social context in which athletes are embedded. Implications and practical applications are discussed.