A Critical Understanding of Sport Psychology

According to (Weinberg and Gould, 2007) Sport Psychology has significantly changed our lives and the lives of many athletes, coaches and other sport and exercise professionals over the years.

Sport psychology has significantly changes our lives and the lives of many athletes, coaches, and other sport and exercise professionals with whom we have worked and trained over the years.

In order to gain a critical understanding of the concept of sports psychology, psychology has been divided vital components into sub headings, which brings sports psychology together a whole.

Personality…

After reading Gill’s version of personality, "Personality is the sum total of an individual’s characteristics which make him or her unique" (Gill, 1977).
However (Eysenck, 1968) uses the best definition for personality, "Personality is the more or less stable and enduring organisation of a person’s character, temperament, intellect and physique, which determines the unique adjustment the individual makes to the environment".

The best ways to understand personality is through its structure. Martens (1975) diagram is the best way to understand personality, as it is divided into three separate but related levels. 

                                                                               

         (Martens, 1975)

Psychological core is known as the most basic level of your personality. This component includes your attitudes, values, interests and motives, and beliefs about yourself. (Weinberg, 2007) Psychological core is often described as “the real you”. The idea is in the quote, it is pinned down to look into your basic values which might revolve around the important of family and friends.

Typical responses are the ways we each learn to adjust to the environment or how we usually respond to the world around us. According to (Weinberg, 2007) typical responses are good indicators of your psychological core. This shows typical responses play a huge part in discovering what type of response you use in day to day activities.  However typical responses may indicate the nature of the core, if you consistently respond to social situations by being quiet and shy, you are likely to be introverted, not extroverted (Hollanders Theory, 1967).
 

Looking further into personality I believe it has a huge impact on the way individuals perceive their social situation, which is also known as ‘role-related behaviour’. Role-related behaviour changes as your perceptions of the environment change. Different situations require playing different roles. Roles can also conflict with each other. For example, a parent who is coaching her child’s soccer team might feel a conflict between her coaching and parenting roles (Weinberg and Gould, 2007).

Looking at personality structure from a coaches view, they can be more effective when we understanding the different levels of personality structure that lie beyond the role-related behaviours particular to a situation.

According to (Woods, 1998) most sports psychologists today will view personality as a function of dispositional and environmental function. After reading (Weinberg and Gould, 2007) it is clear that there are three components to personality, these being; ID, EGO and SUPER EGO.

ID, also known as "sex crazed monkey" is someone who wants to something straight away, an example of this would be a out-going football player, someone who doesn't want to sit and listen I the changing rooms, but get straight out on the pitch and compete to be the best.

Super-ego, is also known as "aging aunty" this is something that stops you achieving what you want to accomplish. This would often be found in athlete's who are very self reserved. Players who do not want to be pushed to achieve goals or competitions are often placed in this category.

Ego is the balance category where a athlete has both, ID and super-ego within them, these type of players need to be motivated more in order for them to achieve what they set out for.

(Holland, 1966) suggests that roles of observation, modelling and reinforcement are central to explaining the way we learn our behaviour or lifestyle habits. This means if you are wanting to consider an individual's behaviour, it is important you consider the environment around them, anything that could change their behaviour, such as; other athlete's, positioning of play or even weather conditions, all such be considered. 

 

Motivation…

After reading (Woods, 1998) their definition of motivation is short but effective, it says "a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way". Although (Weinberg and Gould, 2007) argues that motivation, "can be defined simply as the direction and intensity of one's effort. 
                       

The view of motivation is looked deeper into the interactional theory. It has been said that “interactionist” contend that motivation. Results neither solely from participation factors, such as personality, needs, interests and goals. (Weinberg, 2007)

According to (Weinberg, 2007) the best way to understand motivation is to consider both the person and the situation and how the two interact.

The best way to understand motivation is to examine how personal factors and situational factors interact. Weinberg has the best diagram and explanation for the ‘participant-by-situation interactional model of motivation’.

                                                                                            (Weinberg and Gould, 2007)

Looking at the interactional diagram, it is divided up into three topics, participant or trait-centered view, situation-centered view and interactional view.

Interactional approach focuses on the sporting situation and examines how the athlete’s personality affects performance in this situation. An example of this would be, individuals experiencing particularly high levels of stress (competition) or boredom in sessions such as training. (Woods, 2001)The interactional approach takes into consideration about personal factors, the situation in which the behaviour occurs and the interaction of these two factors.

Research has shown that, psychologists who have attempted to explain performance, only 10-15 per cent can attributed to personality, 10-14 per cent to the situation and a further 10-15 per cent to the interaction between the two. This leaves at least 55 per cent of performance attributable to other factors, such physical and motor ability. (Cox, 1998)

 

   

The trait-centered view contends that motivated behaviour is primarily a function of individual characteristics. For example, needs and goals (Gill, 2000).

According to (Weinberg and Gould, 2007) coaches often describe an athlete as a “real winner”, this implies that an individual has a personal makeup that allow him to excel in sport. However on the other hand, another athlete may be described as a “loser”, implying that he/she has no get-up and go towards sport. 

In direct to trait-centered view, the situation view contends that motivation level is determined primarily by the situation (Weinberg and Gould 2007). People who support the situational view claim that the situation in which the athlete finds themselves is the primary reason behind motivation. However after reading (Cox, 1998) questions were asked if this was the case, how can an athlete’s motivation continue to participating be explained when the situation-centered is unfavourable. 

Although the importance of individual differences in motivation plays a key part in sport in essence, individuals not only participate in sport and physical activity for goals but also seek for the excitement of awards and achievements. After reading (Weinberg, 2007) it is therefore important to understand why some people are motivated by different methods and situations.

What is Achievement motivation?

Achievement motivation refers to an individual’s effort to complete a task or overcome obstacles in which they may face in ordinary day to day life. Achievement motivation is based on the two types of motivation levels. The (McClelland-Atkinson, 1953) model uses a young footballer as an example, in the last five minutes of a game where the score is 1-1: he a young footballer is asked if he wants to take the penalty kick. He considers he has a fifty-fifty chance of failing, imagining the shame of doing so and says “no thanks”. His behaviour is driven by the motive to avoid failure. The next player who is asked steps and says “this is my chance to be a hero, I can save the match”. This player is driven by the motivate to achieve success. (Woods, 1998)

As briefly discussed above, the need to achieve success are people who are motivated to succeed and are not worried about the possibility of failure?  Athletes who are driven by success are more competitive and tend to be stimulated by situations involving risk. These types of individuals are more likely to accept challenges where the probability of success is low and perceive easy tasks to be too boring to attempt.

However on the other hand, athletes who more likely the type to avoid failure is people who are scared of failure and as such lack a competitive. These type of athlete’s are likely to be shy and reserves, who hate being evaluated on their ability, in result this could lower self-esteem. Athletes who are more reserved are more likely to accept challenges where the probability of success is quite high or attempt tasks that are impossible because they might actually receive credit for having a go against the odds.

Weiner’s basic attribution theory model focuses on how people explain their successes and failures. This basic attribution category is stability, a factor to which one attributes success or failure is either fairly permanent or unstable.  Locus of causality, a factor is either external or internal to the individual. Locus of control is a factor which is or is not under our control.

          
(Weinberg and Gould, 2007)

Achievement Goal Theory…

According to the achievement goal theory, three factors interact to determine and person’s motivation: achievement goals, perceived ability and achievement behaviour. The (Weinberg and Gould, 2007) figure is the simplest way to understand what achievement goal theory is.

(Weinberg and Gould, 2007) Three key factors in the achievement goal approach

After reading (Weinberg and Gould, 2007) section on achievement goal theory, it is clear if you are wanting to understand someone’s motivation, we must understand what success and failure mean to that person. The best way to do that is to examine a person’s achievement goals and they interact with that individual’s perception of competence, self-worth or perceived ability.
 

Anxiety/Arousal/Stress relationship…

(Kremer and Scully, 1994) are amongst the psychologists who have argued that separating arousal, anxiety and stress is too tidy because there is considerable overlap and interaction between them. However (Wood, 1998) argues that it does help to consider them one at a time, whilst highlighting ways in which they overlap.

After reading (Gould and Krane, 1992) it underpins the strongest definition of arousal. “General Physiological and Psychological activation of the organism that varies on a continuum from deep sleep to intense excitement”. (Gould and Krane, 1992)

Looking at arousal from a sporting example, when a batsman hit a cricket ball, the fielders interpret what they see and respond accordingly. Physiologically they will already be in the state of activation as the bowler runs up.

According to (Woods, 1998) arousal is neutral; it is the activation of the system. However on the other hand arousal was created in order to achieve optimum performance.

Drive theory…

Drive theory represents the relationship between arousal and performance, the idea of this theory is to see how much an individual's arousal increases. The relationship is known as a linear, this is because it is represented by a straight line, this can be seen on figure 1. The relationship between arousal and performance can also be shown as:

                                               Performance = arousal x skill level (Hull, 1951)

This is a key component, the performer's level of ability is designed in a skill. If a skill or task is well learned then arousal, such as in competition, will enable the performer to produce the skill very successfully. However according to (Woods, 1998) if the performer's skill level is low, then arousal will damage the performance.

One of the main criticisms of drive theory is what is meant by a well learned tasks, this is because it is difficult to clearly define. This type of theory also offers no explanation for times when a sports player fails to succeed when performing a 'well-learned' task, an example of this would be, a striker missing a penalty in football. (Woods, 1998)
 

Figure 1: A graph to show relationship between arousal and performance

           

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

                           (Hulls Drive theory, Weinberg and Gould, 2007)

Inverted-U hypothesis...

The Inverted-U hypothesis is based on the Yerkes-Dodson Law, this predicts the relationship between arousal and quality of performance. The inverted-U hypothesis states that arousal causes an increase in performance, but only up to a point, this is called the 'optimal point'. (Woods, 1998) Figure 2 shows arousal against performance levels, also known as the inverted-U hypothesis.

As arousal level increased, so too does performance levels. However, further increase in arousal could cause performance to decline. This is represented by an inverted U, this reflects high performance with the optimal level of arousal and lesser performance with either low or high arousal.

According to (Weinberg and Gould, 2007) most athletes and coaches accept the general notions of the inverted-U hypothesis. This could be down to most people having experienced under arousal, optimal arousal and over arousal. 

Figure 2: Graph showing the inverted-U relationship between arousal and performance.(Weinberg and Gould, 2007)

Anxiety is a negative emotional state with feelings of worry, nervousness and apprehension associated with activation or arousal of the body. Arousal is the physiological state of readiness and psychological activation. After researching it is clear that (Spielberger 1966) decided to split anxiety into two categories, these being, state anxiety and trait anxiety.

Research has shown that one reason why athlete's tend to get uptight before competition could be related to the pressure of being observed. Spectators of any sport are constantly evaluating the skills of the athletes they are watching and this can be extremely daunting to those who are not trained to deal affectively with this type of pressure. "8 out of 10 basketball players all said they feel uptight before games, due to not wanting to let fans and supporters down". (Kremer and Moran, 2008)

 

Trait anxiety...
After reading (Weinberg and Gould, 2007) it is clear that trait anxiety predisposes an individual to perceive as threatening a wide range of circumstances that objectively are not actually dangerous physically or psychologically.

Trait anxiety is enduring, it is personality trait, it is part of the individual's pattern of behaviours. (Spielberger, 1966) predicts that individuals with high trait anxiety will perceive more situations as threatening, and respond to challenges with more state anxiety than those who are low trait-anxious individuals.  

State anxiety...
State anxiety is when you feel apprehensive, tense and short of breath at the start of a race you are experiencing what Speilberger. State anxiety is divided into two sub headings, cognitive state anxiety and somatic state anxiety.

Cognitive state anxiety is where you feel nervousnesses, apprehension and worry. Example of this would be before a football final, the nerves kick in, such as feeling sick, butterfly feelings and also shaking.

Research by (Robert Nideffer, 1976) has shown that he studied the role of attention and concentration in sport. He argues that increased arousal causes changes in attention and concentration which can affect performance. As evidence he has states what increased arousal may do:
- Cause narrowing of the performer's attentional field;
- Lead to the athlete scanning the attentional field less often;
- Cause players to use their dominant attentional style rather than several attentional styles as the occasion demands. (Robert Nideffer, 1976)


Stress...
(McGrath, 1970) defines stress as "a substantial imbalance between demand [physical and/or psychological] and response capability, under conditions where failure to meet that demand has important consequences"

Stress can either be good or bad, depending upon the individual's personal interpretation.
'Eustress' is a good feeling, an example of this could be Manchester United winning the Premier League in 2013. However on the flip side, 'distress' is a bad feeling, this could be Manchester United losing their best manager, Alex Ferguson in 2013 to go onto to losing at home to Liverpool FC, 3-1 in March, 2014. Both stress causes will bring both bad and good responses to activity and day to day life, depending on the type of person someone is, is the way he/she will respond to it.

Stress is a negative way and therefore have a negative impact on sporting performance. This type of demand is called a stressor.

Stressors are the demands which are the start of the stress process. As sportspeople, we frequently put ourselves in situations which create high demands on us. The threatening athlete's see these demands, the more likely arousal and anxiety will occur. (Woods, 2001)

After researching Psychology as a whole, it is clear that it very important within the sporting environment and every day to day life activities. Without Sports Psychology, technology would not be where it is today, Psychologists would not be able to relate to athlete's and understand how they are feeling.

References...
Berkowitz, L. (1969). Roots of Aggression. New York: Atherton Press.

Bird, A.M and Horn, A. (1990. Cognitive anxiety and mental errors in sport. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 12,  211-216

Cattell, R.B. (1965). The Scientific Analysis of Personality. Baltimore: Penguin.

Holland, J. L. (1966). The psychology of vocational choice. Waltham, MA: Blaisdell.

Martens, R (1975). Physical education and training; Sports; Socialization; Social interaction; Psychology, Social; Psychological aspects; Social aspects. New York: Harper & Row. 101-490-164.

McCanny, C. (2013). Anxiety within Sport. The sport in mind. 12 (3), 1-2.

McGrath, J.E. (1970) Major methodological issues. In J.E McGrath (ED.), Social and psychological factors in stress (pp. 19-49). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Moser, J. S., Hajcak, G., Huppert , J. D., Simons, R. F., & Foa, E. B. (2008). Interpretation bias in social anxiety as detected by event related brain potentials. Emotion, 8, 693-700.

Spielberger, C.D. (1966). Anxiety and Behaviour. New York: Academic Press.

Weinberg, R and Gould, D (2007). Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology. New Zealand: Weinberg Gould. 51-97.

Woods, B (1998). Applying Psychology to SPORT. London: Mcilveen Rob. 51-97.