Shuttleworth 1

James Shuttleworth
Dr. E
Writing and Rhetoric
December 11, 2015
Annotated Bibliography
In my research, I hope to study humors potential use as a method to cope with
stress in collegiate athletics and, therefore, how it can be used to reduce the burnout rate
among college athletes. In order to establish this view, I must first make connections
between burnouts and stress and between stress and humor. I will research how stressful
college athletics are and how that stress leads to burnout among athletes. I also have to
research how humor can be used to reduce stress. After I am knowledgeable on these two
subjects, I will be able to put them together and synthesize an essay that makes my
argument that by integrating humor, athletes can reduce the chances that they will
burnout.
Lefcourt, Herbert. "The Humor Solution." Coping with Stress: Effective People and
Processes. Ed. C. R. Snyder. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. 68-92. Print.
This collection as a whole discusses methods of coping with stress. The chapter of
the book that I am concerned with is The Humor Solution. Herbert Lefcourt wrote
this chapter. Lefcourt can be seen as credible because of the personal research that
he contributed to the chapter as well as the evidence of significant research.
Lefcourt boosts the articles credibility when he makes references to the other
well-known psychologists who also showed that humor is a good method to cope
with stress. This chapter contained brief summaries and conclusions to many
different studies on humors relation to stress. This article also defined the
specific pathway that humor helps in coping with stress. Lefcourt showed that
when we cannot deal with the actual problem at hand(problem-focused coping)
then we must mitigate its impacts on our emotional consequences after the
fact(emotion-focused coping)(71). This chapter also showed some counter
argument studies that were in conflict with humor as a successful coping
mechanism and disproved their results logically.
Defreese, J. D., and Alan L. Smith. "Areas Of Worklife And The Athlete BurnoutEngagement Relationship." Journal Of Applied Sport Psychology 25.2 (2013):
180-196. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
This article was the portrayal, overview, and analysis of a study done on the
relationship between burnouts of athletes and other burnout studies in the
workplace. It was written by two authors. J.D. works with the Department of
Exercise and Sport Science at UNC Chapel Hill and Alan Smith works with the
Department of Kinesiology at Michigan State University. Both of these university
programs are prevalent in the athletic community and demonstrate the authors
competence on the subject. The study consisted of surveys from 227 male
collegiate American football players from 12 NCAA teams in Division II and
III(184). The results of the study connected burnout in the athletic setting to

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burnout in the work setting(192). This connection is important because other
research of the work-burnout relationship showed the connection between
burnouts and the six work life areas: workload, control, reward, community,
fairness, and values(181). These work life areas apply to athletics because much
stress can be traced back to these work life areas. This article will be useful in
making the connection between the stress causing aspects of athletics and
burnout.
Kaufman, Keith. "Understanding Student-Athlete Burnout." NCAA. 10 Dec. 2014. Web.
11 Nov. 2015.
This online website article was written by Dr. Keith Kaufman. Kaufman is a
psychologist and has a Bachelor of Arts degree in exercise and sports science. In
addition to practicing psychology, Kaufman also works as a research associate at
Catholic University on a sports psychology research team. These credentials make
Kaufman a credible source despite the fact that the article was sourced on the
internet. The article is also credible because it comes from the NCAA website,
which is a credible source for athletics, especially on the collegiate level. The
article defines burnout as lack of motivation and comprehensive physical and
mental depletion. The article also introduces some statistics that will be useful in
the introduction where I will show the extent of the problems. According to the
article, 47 percent of collegiate athletes reported feeling burned out over their
college career as an athlete. In relation to Kaufmans definition of burnout, 72
percent of athletes experienced staleness and 66 percent stated that they had felt
over trained at certain points.
Moran, Carmen, and Lesley Hughes. "Coping With Stress: Social Work Students And
Humour." Social Work Education 25.5 (2006): 501-517. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
This article is an article that focuses on humors relation to stresses of social work
students. It is written by Carmen C. Moran and Lesley P. Hughes. Moran is a
senior lecturer at the School of Social Work in Sydney Australia. He is published
in many different journals on research that relates to the topic of emotions, social
work, and humor. Though this article is specifically aimed at social work, its
general message and trends can be applied to the athletic setting. This article
describes a study completed by the authors that used survey data from 33 different
social work students (505). Two of the widely accepted and used surveys that
were given were the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale and the Stress Scale
(505). The humor scale was particularly useful for this study and for its
applications to athletics because it breaks humor into four categories: Humor
production, coping humor, liking humor, and attitude to humor(505). The results
of the study showed that there was a negative correlation between stress and
humor production(508). Another benefit of this article will be to its applications
of teaching humor and providing humor as a tool. The article shows the cases
where humor is not warranted (513) and the cases where humor would be

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beneficial to teach to others(514). These applications will be important as I make
suggestions to the programs that service student athletes.
DeFreese, J. D., and Alan L. Smith. "Athlete Social Support, Negative Social
Interactions, And Psychological Health Across A Competitive Sport
Season." Journal Of Sport & Exercise Psychology 36.6 (2014): 619630. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
This article is a good article for general information about athletes, burnouts, and
stress. It was written by two authors. J.D. works with the Department of Exercise
and Sport Science at UNC Chapel Hill and Alan Smith works with the
Department of Kinesiology at Michigan State University. These are the same
authors from the article above Areas of Worklife and Athlete BurnoutEngagement Relationship. The multiple articles on similar topics show the
breadth and depth of research and knowledge that the authors must possess on the
subject matter. This article clearly characterized burnout as perceptions of
emotion and physical exhaustion, reduced accomplishment, and sport
devaluation (619). In addition to providing a general overview, this article also
substantiated the negative correlation between burnouts and social support and the
positive correlation between burnouts and negative social interactions(627). These
two correlations are important to my research because they will help me to tie
humor into the programs offered to athletes and help me to teach humor as a
method to improve social interactions.
Sullivan, Philip. "Humor Styles As A Predictor Of Satisfaction Within Sport
Teams." Humor: International Journal Of Humor Research 26.2 (2013): 343349. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2015.
This article, though short and not entirely conclusive, is useful in my research
because it very clearly makes the connection between satisfaction and humor. If
someone is satisfied with their team, by the definitions of burnout supplied by
previous articles, the athletes will be less likely to burnout. This article was
written by Philip Sullivan, a professor at Brock University in the Department of
Kinesiology. Sullivan has done extensive studies on the characteristics of sport
groups such as cohesion, collective efficacy, and intra-team communication
patterns(347). In addition to correlating humor and team satisfaction, this article
also correlates the types of humor that create the largest team satisfaction. This
distinction is beneficial to my research because it enables me to distinguish
between the best strategies that should be applied to sports teams. Another
potential selling point that this article provides to my essay is that it states that
humor does not just have social effects, but also helps with task functions(347).
This point is beneficial because collegiate athletic services will be more likely to
adopt humor if they know that it has effects both on the social and task levels.