Sports Psychology and Sociology

Vocabulary flashcards for review

Personality

A pattern of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that distinguishes one person from another and persists over time and in different situations.

Personality traits

Stable characteristics of personality.

Personality states

Situation-specific feelings.

Interaction theory

Considers traits, states, and situation-specific factors in understanding behavior.

Gravitational hypothesis

Individuals who possess stable and extroverted personalities tend to gravitate towards sport

Arousal

A physiological state of readiness and psychological activation.

Stress

An unemotional, non-specific response of the body to a stressor.

Eustress

Positive stress.

Distress

Negative stress.

Anxiety

Tension and worry that result from distress.

Trait anxiety

More permanent anxiety, occurs across various situations

State anxiety

The "right now" state, situation-specific anxiety.

Cognitive Anxiety

Psychological component due to fear of negative social evaluation that results in worrying.

Somatic Anxiety

Physical component due to the perception of physiological response like muscular tension.

Pre-competitive anxiety

State anxiety experienced before an event.

Cognitive Load

The amount of mental resources used in working memory to perform various tasks

Motivation

Direction, energy, and intensity of behavior.

Achievement Motivation

Athletes’ predisposition to approach or avoid a competitive situation

Motive to achieve success

Intrinsic motivation.

Fear of failure

Cognitive state anxiety.

Self-Efficacy

Individuals’ belief in their success at a particular task

Attribution theory

People strive to explain, understand, and predict events based on their perceptions

Internal Attribution

Personal force (ability + effort).

External Attribution

Environmental force (task difficulty and luck).

Stability

Attributes that are relatively unchanging from one day to the next versus unstable attributes

Locus of Control

Attributes the athlete perceives as uncomfortable, while externally, as uncontrollable.

Metaphysics

The study of what is real.

Aesthetics

The study of beauty.

Ethics

The study of how we ought to live.

Logic

The study of argument analysis.

Epistemology

the study of the theory of knowledge

Metadisciplinary

Examines and evaluates disciplines themselves; the primary tool is logic.

Intellectual integrity

A commitment to an honest search for truth, conceptual clarification, or a heightened understanding.

Open-mindedness

Being open to rationally founded views that are inconsistent with your own.

Critical attitude

An assumption of fallibility as a willingness to entertain all reasonable claims as true.

Athlein

To contend or to fight for a prize.

Agones

Places of combat, arenas, contests, labors, or struggles.

Aretism

The ideal of competitive sports is striving for human excellence.

Fair play

Pursuing victory to the best of one’s ability while keeping within the rules of the contest.

Ego-puffing

Players making themselves visible in team sports.

Culture

The ways of life people create in a society.

Sport-media nexus

The interdependent relationships between sports organizations, media companies, and corporate sponsors.

Sportainment

Equivalent of a television movie that claims to be based on a true story.