sport psychology

• Personality


  The unique characteristics of a person
• Trait


  • Nature/innate, biological, stable/consistent
• Social learning


  • Nurture, experiences, learned from models
• Interactionist


  Combination of trait and social learning
• Hollander's model


  Explaining personality interaction
• Core


  • Stable psychological beliefs and values
• Typical responses


  • How individuals usually respond
• Role-related


  • Behaviour that responds to the environment
• Attitude


  An individual's beliefs towards something
• Attitude formation


  • Past experiences
  • Social learning
  • Socialisation
  • Role models
  • Media
• Triadic model


  3 components of attitude formation (ABC)
• Affective


  • Feelings towards a sport/activity
• Behavioural


  • Doing the sport/activity (rewards)
• Cognitive


  • Knowing what will/won't happen
• Changing attitude


  Cognitive dissonance, knowledge, praise, persuasive communication (positive beliefs)
• Arousal


  Somatic and cognitive
• Drive


  Performance increases with arousal in a linear fashion
• Inverted-U


  Performance is highest at 'optimum arousal' and decreases either side, varies depending on skill
• Catastrophe


  A sudden drop in performance once the optimum level has been reached, high somatic and cognitive anxiety
• Peak flow


  Ultimate psychological state, concentration, control and 'effortless' movements
• Anxiety


  Fear of failure, case significance, self-confidence/effects, injury
• Somatic anxiety


  • Physiological - increased heart rate, twitching
• Cognitive anxiety


  • Psychological - irrational thoughts, worrying
• Trait anxiety


  Natural tendency to be anxious in any situation
• State anxiety


  Only becoming anxious in a specific situation
• Anxiety measurement


  • Questionnaires/observation
  • Physiological methods
• Aggression


  Purposely harming an opponent, outside of the rules, hostile
• Assertion


  Playing hard with effort, within the rules
• Instinct theory


  Aggression will inevitably build up in people and be released when we are provoked enough
• Frustration-aggression


  When an individual experiences something that blocks them from achieving a goal
• Aggressive cue


  Aggression results from high levels of arousal and cues/triggers being present
• Social learning


  Aggression is learned from observing the reinforced behaviour of role models (socialisation)
• Aggression strategies


  • Cognitive/somatic stress management
  • Ensure praise/positive reinforcement
  • Goals
  • Responsibility
• Motivation


  A person's desire to succeed at something
• Extrinsic motivation


  • Trophies, money, medals, praise, fame
• Intrinsic motivation


  • Self-satisfaction, pride of achieving goals
• Atkinson's achievement motivation theory

  NACH (competition/challenge, welcomes feedback/failure, persistent, takes responsibility, low probability of success) vs NAF (avoidance, low self-efficacy/confidence, gives in, takes the easy option, learned helplessness, high probability of success)
• Goal theory


  Individual goals can be set to increase motivation
• Strategies to increase motivation

  1. Set achievable goals

  2. Provide positive reinforcement / rewards

  3. Credit internal reasons for success
• Social facilitation or inhibition


  • Presence of others can affect performance
  • Passive others (audience)
  • Co-actors
  • Interactive (competitive co-actors, social reinforcers like crowd)