Category: Sports Psychology

How do talented children become elite adult athletes? Many young people start on the road toward becoming  professional  athletes,  but  few  achieve this  level  of  performance.  The  development  of talent  across  a  range  of  achievement  domains, such  as  music,  art,  science,  and  sport,  is  a  classic  area  of  psychological  research.  Over  the  past 20  years …

The most commonly and consistently cited motives for  participating  in  sport  are  developing  and  displaying  competence  (from  learning  new  skills), experiencing  challenges  and  success,  acquiring social benefits that arise from affiliation to a group or team, improving fitness, and having fun. On the other hand, reasons for sport withdrawal include the  attraction  of  other  activities, …

The   developmental   psychologist   Jacquelynne Eccles  suggested  that  parents  influence  their  children’s  involvement  in  sport  in  three  ways:  as providers,  role  models,  and  interpreters.  Parents provide children with opportunities to participate in  sport  by  signing  them  up  for  programs,  transporting them to practices and matches, paying registration  fees,  and  so  on.  Parents  can  act  as  role…

Peers  have  a  particularly  powerful  social  influence  on  youth  development,  particularly  during adolescence.  Positive  peer  interactions  can  help adolescents acquire a range of skills, attitudes, and behaviors.  In  sport  settings,  high  levels  of  peer support  and  quality  friendships  have  been  associated  with  higher  ratings  of  sport  enjoyment, commitment,  intrinsic  motivation,  and  perceived competence. Definitions Alan …

The  coach–athlete  relationship  is  a  unique  interpersonal  relationship  characterized  by  mutually and  interconnected  thoughts,  feelings,  and  emotions  between  an  athlete  and  a  coach.  There  are different  types  of  coach–athlete  relationships, including  traditional  coach–athlete  dyads  (the coach and athlete are not related in any way other than their coaching relationship), married coach– athlete dyads, and family…

Organized  youth  sport  became  popular  in  the 1920s  (in  the  United  Kingdom,  at  least)  in  part based  on  the  idea  that  sport  could  help  to  produce  well-grounded,  physically  strong,  morally sound boys who would be successful contributors to  society,  particularly  in  the  military  and  business  worlds.  In  contemporary  societies,  there  are competing reasons for promoting…

Communication  is  commonly  defined  as  a  transmission of thoughts, feelings, information, knowledge,  and  ideas  by  means  of  written  or  verbal messages.  However,  when  people  communicate face-to-face,  they  position  their  bodies  in  a  certain way, vary their stance, control their eye gaze, and  move  their  hands  in  particular  manners. Therefore, there is an additional set of…

 In  his  influential  theory  of  motivation  and  emotion,  Ivan  Weiner  proposed  that  attributions,  the reasons  that  people  use  to  explain  the  causes  of behavior,  are  powerful  determinants  of  emotions and  motivation.  Although  attribution  researchers  in  sport  have  predominantly  focused  on  self-referent  attributions  (attributions  for  one’s  own behaviors),  it  has  been  proposed  that  team  attributions,  the …

Stereotype threat is the perceived risk of confirming,  as  self-characteristic,  a  negative  stereotype about one’s group. Over 300 studies on academic testing show that the threat of confirming a negative stereotype about one’s group sets into motion a sequence of psychological processes that inhibit cognitive  capacity  and  exacerbate  performance monitoring.  As  a  result,  stigmatized  individuals…

Status  represents  an  individual’s  social  standing in  relation  to  others.  Attributes  of  status  can  be based  upon  physical  characteristics  (e.g.,  age)  or intangible  attributes  (e.g.,  prestige,  prominence). Individuals  with  higher  status  are  often  afforded more social benefits including respect, more unsolicited  help  from  others,  greater  praise  for  performance,  disproportionate  credit  for  successful collaborative  efforts,  and …