Competitive sport may offer an important context where peer acceptance and friendship can be established and developed. Situational and personal factors may, however, hinder or facilitate the development of constructive peer relations in sport. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the perceived motivational climate, achievement goals, perfectionism and indices of peer relationships in a sample of young male and female Norwegian soccer players. Methods 1785 male (n= 1231) and female (n= 488) experienced soccer players (aged 12-19 years; Mean age = 14.9) taking part in the Norway cup international youth soccer tournament responded to a questionnaire measuring perceived peer acceptance and quality of friendship in soccer, perceived motivational climate in soccer, achievement goals as well as adaptive and maladaptive aspects of perfectionism. Multivariate multiple regression analyses with follow-up canonical correlation analyses were conducted to examine association between the predictor and criterion variable set. Results The overall multivariate relationship was significant for both genders; Boys, Wilk's lambda = .74, F (24,4260) = 16,31, P<.001, Girls, Wilk's lambda = .84, F (24,1668) = 3,34, P<.001. Thus, for both boys and girls, motivational climate, achievement goals, and perfectionism were significantly related to the peer relationship variables. For both boys and girls, one unique significant solution seemed to best describe and explain the relationship between the set of variables. It was found that young female players who perceived a predominantly mastery oriented motivational climate, who were task oriented and scored low on maladaptive perfectionism reported better relations with their peers in soccer. In contrast, young male players perceiving the motivational climate as predominantly performance-oriented, being low on task orientation and high on maladaptive perfectionism reported worse relationships with peers. Discussion / Conclusions Results among the young male players suggest that achievement striving characterized by a strong focus on social comparison, besting others and a maladaptive perfectionist focus may be detrimental to the development of constructive peer relations within the team. Results among the female players were of a similar kind as revealed by a significant association between a strong mastery climate, a task goal and the absence of maladaptive perfectionism one the one hand and high level of quality of friendship and social acceptance on the other. Apparently, when players preoccupied with being better than other team members, they may come to look upon each other as competitors within the team and be less willing to invest socially in each other to obtain team success at the expense of their own individual success [1]. Further, maladaptive perfectionists may come to express anger towards fellow players for not performing up to perfectionist standards. This may in turn threaten the development of friendship and peer acceptance. [2]. The findings illustrate the importance of motivation on peer acceptance and quality of friendship relations in youth sports.
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