The incidence of mental health problems and the prevalence of mental disorders among children and adolescents have increased annually with the rapid economic and social development of China. These issues have become critical public health concerns that affect the country’s future (Han & Wang, 2022).

 

Emotional stability is a core criterion for assessing individual mental health. A previous study by Chen (2023) highlighted the close relationship between emotional stability and mental health. Emotional stability refers to personality traits related to emotional responses, such as neuroticism from the Big Five personality traits, that align with situational contexts and are consistent across different occasions and times (Dong et al., 2017). Emotionally stable individuals are not easily provoked by trivial matters that may elicit substantial emotional responses; even when emotional fluctuations occur, they can control their emotions within a reasonable range of time (Zhang et al., 2022). Conversely, emotionally unstable individuals are more likely to experience negative emotions, including anxiety, annoyance, depression, and anger (Perkins et al., 2015), and will often exhibit negative traits such as a negative problem-solving style, low self-efficacy, negative coping strategies, and low subjective well-being (Mader et al., 2023; Muntean et al., 2022; Ruiz, 2005). High school students refer to students who are receiving education at the high school level, and their ages are generally between 15 and 18 years old. These adolescent students often experience intense, immediate, and unstable emotions (Liu et al., 2017). Extreme emotional reactions not only affect students’ academic performance and daily lives, but can also seriously affect their mental health (Han & Wang, 2022). Therefore, using practical measures to improve the emotional stability of high school students is an important issue faced by psychology and education.

 

Exercise intervention is to improve health levels or master sports skills, and to conduct purposeful, planned, and controllable systematic exercise training for specific groups of people. Physical activity is widely acknowledged as an effective means of improving mental health (Arabzadeh et al., 2023; Mahindru et al., 2023; Santos et al., 2023). The most significant mental health benefit of sports is that it can help individuals to effectively control and regulate their emotions (Rezaie et al., 2023). Recently, studies have confirmed that physical activity can enhance emotional stability and improve emotional regulation capacity, with supporting evidence derived from three main sources. First, emotional regulation theory posits that physical activity, by virtue of its situational characteristics (e.g., structured social interaction) and stress-relieving effects, provides a context for individuals to practice emotional regulation, thereby enhancing their ability to manage emotions and promoting stability (Peng et al., 2024). Second, correlational studies using questionnaire surveys have consistently demonstrated a positive association between participation in physical activity and emotional stability (e.g., Wenzel et al., 2021). Third, an empirical study on the relationship between sports and emotional stability primarily used specific forms of exercise (i.e., football and Zumba) as intervention methods (Barene & Krustrup, 2022). Further, research has shown that collective projects exert greater improvement effects on emotional stability than individual projects (Andersen et al., 2019). Basketball, as an example of a collective project, is widely appreciated by students for its collective, confrontational, and performative aspects (DiFiori et al., 2018). Given these reasons, this study selected basketball as a sports intervention program to explore its effect on emotional stability among high school students.

 

Furthermore, self-control refers to an individual’s ability to consciously control their behavior to achieve a goal or overcome impulses, temptations, or inherent habits (Daly et al., 2014). A correlation exists between self-control and emotional stability, as it has been found that students with high self-control tend to have stronger emotional regulation abilities (Zhang et al., 2022). Higher emotional regulation abilities allow students to keep their emotions within a controllable range when facing different situations, preventing emotional outbursts (Yin et al., 2024). Concurrently, scholars have conducted a series of studies on the relationship between exercise intervention and self-control, confirming through behavioral, electroencephalogram, and other indicators that sports are an effective means to improving individuals’ self-control (Cao et al., 2025; Xiang et al., 2019). Consequently, the promotion of emotional stability in individuals through sports may be achieved through the mediating variable of self-control.

 

This study used high school students to determine whether basketball practice can improve emotional stability and self-control. We proposed the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Basketball intervention will directly improve emotional stability in high school students.

Hypothesis 2: Basketball intervention will indirectly improve emotional stability in high school students by first improving self-control.

Sample size was determined a priori using G*Power software (Version 3.1), with an effect size of 0.25, an alpha level of .05, two groups, and two measurements. The analysis indicated a required total sample size of 66. Accounting for an estimated 20% attrition rate, the target sample size was increased to 80 participants, with at least 40 per group. Using convenience sampling, we randomly assigned students from two high school classes in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, to either a control group or an experimental group. Prior to the experiment, participants were screened via a questionnaire, with those reporting genetic syndromes, heart conditions, or physical disabilities being excluded. The final sample comprised 89 participants. The control group comprised 24 boys and 22 girls (M = 14.79 years, SD = 0.85), and the experimental group comprised 23 boys and 20 girls (M = 14.89 years, SD = 0.77).

 

The experimental group underwent basketball exercise interventions as planned, and five students were randomly selected to wear Polar heart rate sensors before each session to monitor their heart rates. The exercise intensity was set to moderate, referring to the moderate-intensity aerobic heart rate calculation formula recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine (Garber et al., 2011). The target heart rate range was calculated as follows: (220 – age) × (60–69%), which is a commonly used criterion for moderate-intensity exercise, balancing exercise effectiveness and safety. Each session lasted 30 minutes, excluding warm-up and cool-down times, and was conducted three times per week over 8 weeks. The control group attended regular physical education classes, held three times weekly for 45 minutes each. These sessions included basic fitness training (e.g., jogging, calisthenics, and stretching), instruction in general sports skills (e.g., badminton, table tennis, and rope jumping—all nonteam-based activities), and free activity time. Throughout the study, all participants were instructed not to engage in any additional physical activity outside of their assigned classes to avoid confounding the results. This study was approved by the ethics committee of Yangzhou University Medical College. All participants provided informed consent.

We used the Self-Control Scale for Middle School Students compiled by H. Wang and Lu (2004). This scale includes three dimensions: emotional self-control (e.g., “I can remain calm when criticized by teachers”), cognitive self-control (e.g., “I can concentrate on studying without distracting thoughts”), and behavioral self-control (“I can persist in completing my study plan”), with a total of 36 items. The scale uses a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree, with higher scores indicating stronger self-control. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the scale was .92 in the original study and .88 in this study.

 

We measured emotional stability using the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Neuroticism Scale) revised by M. Y. Qian et al. (2000). This scale consists of 12 items, scored as “yes” (1 point) or “no” (0 points). An example item is “Do you often feel anxious for no reason?” As age significantly affects the scale scores, raw scores were converted to T-scores (T = 50 + 10X, where X = [raw score – M] / SD). Higher T-scores indicate higher levels of neuroticism, reflecting lower emotional stability. Therefore, this variable is also labeled as “neuroticism (reverse indicator of emotional stability)” in this study. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the scale was .80.

In this study, we used SPSS 26.0 to analyze and process the data. An independent-samples t test was used to test data homogeneity across the experimental and control groups before the experiment. Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to evaluate the effects of group and time factors on self-control and emotional stability, and we used Model 4 of the PROCESS program to assess mediating effects (Wu et al., 2026). Variable coding was set as follows: experimental group = 1; and control group = 0. Statistical significance was set at p < .05.

The Harman single-factor test for common method bias, conducted prior to formal data analyses, indicated that 14 factors had eigenvalues greater than 1, and the amount of variance explained by the first factor was 21.07%, which is below the critical criterion of 40%. These results indicated no serious common method bias in this study.

We conducted independent-samples t tests on the baseline self-control and emotional stability scores for high school students in the experimental and control groups. The results indicated nonsignificant differences in the baseline values between the two groups, suggesting that the two groups of participants were homogeneous before the experiment (see Table 1), thus meeting the requirements for experimental grouping.

Emotional stability served as the dependent variable, while group (experimental versus control) and time (pretest versus posttest) were treated as independent variables. A mixed-design ANOVA revealed no significant main effect of group, however it showed a significant main effect of time and a significant time × group interaction (see Table 2). Simple effects analysis further indicated the following (see Figure 1 and Table 3): (a) prior to the intervention, emotional stability scores did not differ significantly between groups; (b) after the intervention, the experimental group scored significantly lower than the control group (DiFiori et al., 2018); and (c) the experimental group displayed a significant improvement in emotional stability following the intervention, while the control group exhibited no significant change. These results demonstrated that the basketball intervention significantly enhanced emotional stability among high school students.

Self-control served as the dependent variable, with group (experimental versus control) and time (pretest versus posttest) as independent variables. A mixed-design ANOVA revealed no main effect of group, but did show a significant main effect of time and a significant time × group interaction (see Table 4). Simple effects analysis revealed the following (see Figure 2 and Table 5): (a) at pretest, self-control scores did not differ significantly between groups; (b) at posttest, the experimental group scored significantly higher than the control group; and (c) within the experimental group, posttest scores improved significantly relative to pretest, while no significant change occurred in the control group. These results indicated that the basketball intervention significantly enhanced self-control among high school students.

 

To examine intervention effects across specific self-control dimensions, we conducted mixed-design ANOVAs with each dimension as the dependent variable. For emotional self-control, the results revealed no main effect of group, but showed a significant main effect of time and a significant time × group interaction (see Table 4). Simple effects analysis (see Table 5) indicated no between-group difference at pretest, but showed a significant difference at posttest, with the experimental group exhibiting significant improvement over time while the control group did not. Thus, emotional self-control was significantly enhanced following the basketball intervention.

 

For cognitive self-control, no significant main effects of group or time were observed, although a significant group × time interaction emerged (see Table 4). Subsequent analysis revealed no significant between- or within-group differences at either timepoint (see Table 5), suggesting that the intervention did not exert a significant effect on this dimension.

 

For behavioral self-control, there was no main effect of group, although a significant main effect of time and a significant time × group interaction were noted (see Table 4). Simple effects analysis confirmed no between-group difference at pretest, a significant difference at posttest, and a significant pretest to posttest improvement within the experimental group only (see Table 5). This indicated that behavioral self-control increased significantly after the intervention.

 

Collectively, the basketball intervention effectively improved overall emotional stability and self-control in high school students, including their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral self-control.

We analyzed posttest data to verify the hypothetical mediation model of this study. As shown in Table 6, the results indicated that both the basketball intervention and self-control negatively predicted T-scores (that is, levels of neuroticism) of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Neuroticism Scale). Since lower T-scores on this scale indicate higher emotional stability, basketball intervention and self-control essentially predicted greater emotional stability among high school students.

The results of the mediation test using the bootstrapping method (with 5,000 resamples) indicated that the basketball intervention significantly affected the emotional stability of high school students, with an effect value of –.41 (representing 59.42% of the total effect). Self-control had a significant mediating effect on the relationship between the basketball intervention and emotional stability, with a mediating effect size of –.28 (representing 40.58% of the total effect). Since none of their 95% confidence intervals contained zero, the direct, mediated, and total effects of the model were significant (see Figure 3). Given the above, this study supported Hypotheses 1 and 2.

This study found that, after 8 weeks of moderate-intensity 30-minute basketball exercises, the intervention significantly improved the emotional stability of high school students. This result confirms Hypothesis 1, a finding corroborated by other related studies (Wei et al., 2024). Previous studies have confirmed that individual and group sports can improve individual emotional stability (Q. Wang et al., 2021); however, group sports such as basketball and football have a more pronounced effect on emotional stability than individual sports like running and aerobics. Several scholars have explored the relationship between motor intervention and emotional stability using brain function mechanisms, discovering that, after a period of exercise intervention, the emotional stability, cognition, and brain activity of participants improved (Han & Wang, 2022).

 

Overall, the benefits of exercise on emotional stability have been confirmed. When encountering psychological problems, such as difficulties and setbacks during exercise, individuals may find it beneficial to engage in mutual confiding to alleviate and release suppressed emotions. Accordingly, improving emotional stability in group exercise programs is generally more effective than in individual programs. Basketball requires greater teamwork, communication, emotional control, and rule following. It does not allow teammates to complain to each other, express dissatisfaction with penalties, or experience other negative emotions. This theoretically verifies the hypothesis.

After 8 weeks of the basketball intervention, the overall, emotional, and behavioral self-control levels of high school students significantly improved. This conclusion has been confirmed by various studies that have found basketball interventions to promote self-control in college students, mobile phone addicts, and young children (Policastro et al., 2018, Xiao et al., 2021). However, relatively few studies have examined basketball interventions aimed at improving self-control among high school students. As basketball is a fast-paced sport, the individual’s response demands greater effort. In basketball, team members should always pay attention to the ball, their teammates, opponents, and their movements and positions. Additionally, they should always abide by basketball rules throughout the process of exercising individual self-control and maintaining a high performance level. Energy model theory of self-control also supports this view. It holds that when an individual performs a self-control task, it must consume a limited resource, such as muscle strength, which becomes briefly depleted during use (Baumeister et al., 2024). With proper rest, this resource can be restored to its original level or even exceed it temporarily. This view is more prominent during exercise, when self-control resources are continually consumed. Individuals may feel fatigued, experience discomfort, have difficulty breathing, and even desire to give up. This phenomenon is physiologically referred to as the pole. When self-control resources are exhausted, persevering through the pole will cause a pleasant feeling of movement. The self-control threshold slowly increases as one persists through the pole, improving self-control (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000).

 

Unlike in previous studies, after 8 weeks of exercise intervention, the cognitive self-control of the experimental group in our study exhibited a marginal increase, however it did not reach statistical significance, p = .29, indicating no significant difference compared to the pretest or control group, whose cognitive self-control decreased. This may be because, first, cognitive self-control reflects the ability of an individual to regulate thoughts, and high school students, being in the early stages of youth, tend to be immature, wander easily, and be easily distracted. Second, the classroom atmosphere of the experimental group was harmonious and active, the classroom content was novel, and student participation was high. In contrast, the classroom teaching content of the control group was relatively dull and insufficiently attractive. Therefore, their cognitive self-control declined.

Based on the above results suggesting that basketball interventions promote emotional stability, self-control, and logical analysis among high school students, a self-control mediation model for basketball interventions is proposed to enhance emotional stability in this population. Path analysis revealed that self-control partially mediated the relationship between basketball interventions and emotional stability. Specifically, basketball interventions can directly promote the emotional stability of high school students and indirectly achieve this through the mediating variable of self-control. Relevant theoretical and empirical studies have confirmed the previous set of results, which can be explained by short-term emotional effects, long-term emotional effects, and stress effects (Barene & Krustrup, 2022; Wenzel et al., 2021). Short-term emotional effects indicate that a non-competitive, pleasant physical activity can reduce the levels of anxiety, depression, and other negative emotions in the short term, thereby forming an excellent emotional response. Long-term emotional effects suggest that long-term regular physical activity is rarely associated with adverse emotional reactions, such as anxiety and depression, over an extended period and can help improve mood.

 

Additionally, empirical studies on basketball interventions aimed at promoting individual emotional stability have provided evidence for the present study. The emotional stability of individuals participating in collective sports such as basketball and football has been found to be significantly improved, with a more pronounced effect than in individual sports (Hoffmann et al., 2022). This latter effect is achieved through the mediating variable of self-control. First, participation in basketball effectively fosters the development of self-control. As a dynamic and strategically complex team sport, basketball requires players to continuously monitor teammates and opponents, adapt tactics in real time, and make rapid decisions (Guo & Wang, 2025). Such an environment demands the consistent inhibition of automatic responses, shifts in attentional focus, and engagement in planned actions, essentially providing repeated practice in cognitive control functions. Regular involvement in such structured physical activities is known to strengthen executive functions associated with prefrontal cortex development, thereby solidifying the self-regulatory capacity of individuals (Friedman & Robbins, 2022). Second, enhanced self-control directly contributes to improved emotional stability. A core component of self-control is emotional self-regulation, which involves modulating emotional arousal, inhibiting impulsive emotional reactions, and employing adaptive strategies to manage affect (Wenzel et al., 2021). Higher emotional self-control enables individuals to more effectively mobilize cognitive resources to reappraise stressful situations, buffer negative emotional experiences, and thus maintain greater emotional stability in the face of challenges. Accordingly, the self-control strengthened through basketball intervention, particularly its emotion-regulatory dimension, provides adolescents with enhanced internal psychological resources to support emotional stability.

 

Collectively, beyond the direct emotional benefits of physical activity, basketball interventions systematically cultivate participants’ self-control by engaging them in contexts that demand continuous cognitive and emotional regulation during fast-paced social interactions. This, in turn, equips them with sustainable psychological skills for affect regulation, thereby indirectly and meaningfully promoting emotional stability.

This study has several limitations. First, it only measured two time points (i.e., pretest and posttest), which may not accurately reveal the dynamic effects of the basketball intervention on each dependent variable. The number of measurements should be increased in future studies to further explore the dynamic impact of basketball interventions on the emotional stability and self-control of high school students. Second, the scales used to measure self-control and emotional stability in this study might have introduced specific measurement errors, which could have been minimized using measurement methods from experimental psychology. Third, based on the literature collation and analysis, variables other than self-control might have affected emotional stability; these related variables should be further explored in future cross-sectional surveys. Finally, participants in the experimental group might have realized that they were special participants, potentially influencing the experimental process.

This study found that an 8-week moderate-intensity basketball intervention promoted emotional stability in high school students. This intervention was also found to improve self-control among high school students. We suggest that such an intervention can indirectly promote emotional stability by improving self-control in high school students.

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