Shame norms, achievement pressure, and controlled self-regulation: cultural pathways to psychological distress and performance outcomes in endurance athletes.

Shame norms, defined as perceived group-level standards linking athletic failure to collective disgrace, represent a culturally specific but understudied antecedent of motivational regulation in Chinese competitive sport. The present study tested a dual-pathway model in which shame norms are associated with achievement pressure, which selectively relates to controlled self-regulation as a performance-related pathway while simultaneously contributing to psychological distress as a health-cost pathway. A total of 388 competitive long-distance runners were initially recruited from five universities and four running clubs across three Chinese cities, and 345 athletes who completed all five measurement waves constituted the final analytic sample. Participants completed measures of shame norms, achievement pressure, behavioural regulation, psychological distress, burnout, and social support at each wave, alongside a standardised 5,000 m time trial. An ACT-informed multimodal psychological skills training programme was delivered across Weeks 1 to 8. Baseline latent structural equation models supported the hypothesised associations: shame norms predicted achievement pressure, achievement pressure predicted controlled but not autonomous self-regulation, and shame norms and achievement pressure were associated with psychological distress; observed-score OLS regressions on composite scores showed a consistent pattern. Post-intervention path coefficients were attenuated, consistent with statistical range restriction and possible motivational decoupling, but the single-arm design prevents causal attribution to the programme. Overall, the findings identify shame norms as a distinct upstream antecedent in SDT-based sport psychology models and highlight the psychological costs of culturally driven controlled motivation in endurance athletes.