Sports Psychology Notes

Personality and the Athlete

• Personality Definition: A pattern of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors distinguishing one person from another, persisting over time and situations.
• Research on the relationship between personality and athletic performance is significant but still limited.

Comparing Athletes and Non-Athletes

• Athletes tend to be more:
  • Stable
  • Extroverted
  • Competitive
  • Dominant
  • Authoritarian
  • Self-confident
  • Achievement-oriented
  • Persistent
  • Psychologically well-adjusted
  • Conservative in political views

Comparing Personality: Different Skill Levels

• Elite athletes differ from less skilled athletes in certain psychological states.
• Profile of Mood States (POMS): Identifies an "iceberg" profile where successful athletes score higher on vigor and lower on negative mood states (tension, depression, anger, fatigue, confusion).
• Mood states differ, but personality traits might not differ as much.
• Personality traits: Stable characteristics.
• Personality states: Situation-specific feelings.
• Interactional theory: Considers traits, states, and situation-specific factors.

Developmental Effect of Sport on Personality

• Athletic experience can shape a person.
• Certain personality traits attract sport involvement.
• Gravitational hypothesis: Individuals with stable and extroverted personalities tend to gravitate toward sports.

Anxiety and Athletic Performance

Arousal, Stress, and Anxiety

• Distinction between arousal, stress, and anxiety is important.

Arousal

• A physiological state of readiness and psychological activation.
• Involves the autonomic nervous system, preparing the body for fight or flight.
• Can sometimes produce amazing feats of strength, power, and endurance.

Stress

• Unemotional, non-specific response of the body to a stressor.
• Can be positive (eustress) or negative (distress), depending on the interpretation of the situation.

Anxiety

• Tension and worry that results from distress.
  • Trait anxiety: More permanent, occurs across various situations.
  • State anxiety: "Right now" state, situation-specific.
    • Cognitive: Psychological component due to fear of negative social evaluation, resulting in worrying (e.g., "I’m afraid of losing").
    • Somatic: Physical component due to the perception of physiological responses like muscular tension (e.g., "I feel nervous before the event").

Arousal U Shaped

• Inverted U Hypothesis
  • Under Arousal = Low Performance
  • Optimal Arousal = High Performance
  • Over Arousal = Low Performance
    $Figure \ 1. \ Inverted \ U \ Hypothesis$

Anxiety and Athletic Performance

Pre-competitive anxiety

• State anxiety experienced prior to an event.
• Has a significant effect on athletic performance.

Cognitive Anxiety

• Remains high days before the event, then fluctuates when the event starts.
• Linear relationship: the lower, the better the performance.

Somatic Anxiety

• Remains high one day before, then decreases once the event starts.
• Inverted U relationship: needed, but when too high, performance decreases.

Symptoms of Distress Checklist:

• Cold, clammy hands
• Increased heart rate
• Cotton mouth
• Faster breathing
• Inability to concentrate
• Trembling hands
• Desire to urinate often
• Tense muscles
• Diarrhea
• Nausea
• Feeling of fatigue
• Voice distortion

Cognitive Load

Short Term

• Amount of mental resources used in working memory to perform various tasks.
• Only 5-9 items can be stored in working memory, and only 2-4 can actually be processed.
• Multiple cognitive tasks lower performance.
• When there are multiple inputs, the chance of switching is HIGH.
• Email, Phone, Shiny Object, Sound, Beep, Movement, etc.

Long Term Stressors

• What’s on your mind?
  • Deadlines
  • Relationships
  • Events
  • Expectations
• Psychological Effects:
  • Limited Mental Capacity
  • Inability to Sleep
  • Easily Aggravated
  • Forgetful
• Physiological Effects:
  • Reduced Recovery
  • Weight Gain
  • Increased Blood Pressure

Relaxation interventions

• There are several active strategies athletes can use to manage their cognitive state anxiety.
• Although each technique should be tried, one may end up working the best.

Progressive Muscular Relaxation

• Inhale and tense a specific muscle group for about five seconds.
• Exhale and release the tension, concentrating on the feeling of relaxation.
• Repeat systematically from head to toes.
• Valuable the night before the event.

Positive Imagery

• With closed eyes, imagine performing well in the exact environment that causes anxiety.
• Also, imagine positive feelings associated with successful performance.
• Requires practice.

Positive Self-Talk

• Reassuring oneself with positive thoughts and statements.
• Example: “I’m a good free throw shooter” versus “What will the coach or my team think of me if I blow this shot?”
• Attitude is a little thing that can make a big difference.

Motivation and Sport

• Motivation: Direction, energy, and intensity of behavior.
• Used synonymously to mean inspiration, enthusiasm, or the will to win.

Achievement Motivation

• Athlete’s predisposition to approach or avoid a competitive situation.
• It includes the concept of desire to excel.
• Not innate like hunger or thirst.
• Developed or learned.
• Needed, but when too high, performance decreases.

McClelland–Atkinson model of achievement motivation

• Motive to achieve success = intrinsic motivation (IM).

• Fear of failure = cognitive state anxiety (CSA).

• Achievement motivation = IM – CSA

  • $Achievement \ motivation = IM \ – \ CSA$

• If desire to participate > fear of failure, will participate / perform.

• If fear of failure > desire to participate, will not participate / perform.

Modified McClelland–Atkinson model

• Original model unable to consistently show that higher achievement motivation leads to better performance.
• Extrinsic motivation introduced.
• e.g., money, trophy, and other forms of reward.
• Acknowledges that factors external to athletes may influence their performance.
• Explains why those with high fear of failure and low intrinsic motivation end up participating and performing.

Self-Confidence, Self-Efficacy, and Motivation

• Self-confidence distinguishes between individuals showing high and low achievement motivation and generally determines athletic success.
• Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy
• Self-efficacy: Individual’s belief of success at a particular task.
• Self-confident across various situations, while an individual with high self-efficacy feels confident about succeeding at a particular task.
• Sporting environment = specific situation.

What Enhances Self-Efficacy?

• Successful performance
• Vicarious experience
• Verbal persuasion
• Emotional arousal

Successful Performance

• Most important
• Raises expectations for future successes
• Repeated success leads to:
  • high self-efficacy and
  • low influence of occasional failure
• Tips:
  • Break down skill learning into small steps
  • Practice, practice, practice
  • Highlight successes and downplay setbacks

Vicarious Performance

• Demonstrating repeated success through participatory modeling
  1. A highly competent model performs a task before the athlete tries on their own
  2. Athlete observes to see how it is done correctly
  3. Model assists the subject in a successful performance of the task

Verbal Persuasion

• Constant encouragement and specific skill instructions provided by teacher or coach
• Athletes learn by hearing, just as they do by watching
• Tips:
  • Specific is better than general feedback
  • Have an athlete repeat back the instructions
  • Focus on the positive aspects

Emotional Arousal

• Too much or too little emotional arousal will have a negative impact on an athlete’s development of self-efficacy.
• Tips:
  • When learning skill, keep things relaxed
  • Get to know your athletes as some will need more arousal, while others will need to be taught to relax
  • Help your athletes learn how to recognize when they need to “psych up or calm down”

Goal-Setting Strategies

• Another way to improve athlete or participant motivation
• Goal-setting Strategies for Maximum Motivation
  • Set specific goals that are observable, measurable, and achievable.
  • Set realistic but challenging goals.
  • Set positive goals, not negative goals (such as "play defensively" rather than "don't allow a touchdown").
  • Coaches and teachers should negotiate goals for their athletes or students, not mandate them.
  • Set short-term as well as long-term goals.
  • Set goals for your practices as well as your actual competitions.
  • Set goals related to an athlete's performance or technical execution, not contest outcome (win versus lose).

Causal Attribution in Sport

• Attribution theory
  • Assumes that people strive to explain, understand, and predict events based on their own perceptions
  • Whether these perceptions are correct or incorrect is beside the point
  • What the athlete believes to be true is more important for future motivation

Development of Causal Attribution Theory

• Outcomes can be attributed
  • Internally = personal force (ability + effort)
  • Externally = environmental force (task difficulty and luck)
• Stability
  • Stable attributes that are relatively unchanging from one day to the next versus unstable
• Locus of control
  • Internal – attributes athlete perceives as controllable, while external as uncontrollable

Affective Responses Associated with Causal Attributions

• Internal attribution generally results in greater affect than an external attribution

• There may be certain cause-and-effect relationships among attributions, outcome, and affective response

• Affect (pride / shame)

  • Effort
  • Ability
  • Task difficulty
  • Luck

• Locus of Control

  • External
    • Success
      • Gratitude
      • Thankfulness
      • Luck
    • Failure
      • Anger
      • Surprise
      • Astonishment
  • Internal
    • Success
      • Pride
      • Confidence
      • Competence
      • Satisfaction
    • Failure
      • Shame
      • Guilt
      • Incompetence
      • Depression

Causal Attributions, Future Expectations, and Motivation

• Attribution endorsed has an important impact on the athlete’s expectancy for future performance
• Whenever an outcome is different from what was expected based on past experience, an athlete tends to endorse an unstable attribution (e.g., effort / luck)
• When an outcome is as expected, based on past performances, a stable attribution (e.g., ability or task difficulty) is endorsed
• We should be able to predict future expectations about athletic performance based on the types of attributions individuals indicate for their present performance
• Tips:
  • Ascribing failures to unstable causes does not imply repeated failure; therefore, in young athletes, it helps to attribute failure to lack of effort
  • In young athletes, success should be attributed to both stable and internal factors, because stable attribution will improve expectancy for future success and internal attribution will enhance self-confidence