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PSYC 3480 MIDTERM 1 EXAM GUIDE-Psychology of Sport
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PSYC 3480 MIDTERM 1 EXAM GUIDE-Psychology ofSport
UNIT ONE: AN INTRODUCTION TO SPORT PSYCHOLOGY AND RESEARCH
PERSPECTIVES
Goals and Definitions of Sport Psychology
- Sport psychology attempts to apply what we know about the psychology of
human behaviour to better describe, understand, explain, predict and improve
the performance and experience of athletes and coaches
- Most define sport psychology as:
a) The scientific study of the psychological factors that influence and are
influenced by participation and performance in sport, exercise and
physical activity
b) The application of the knowledge gained through this study to
everyday settings
- People typically contact a sport psychologist in order to improve performance;
to overcome the pressure of competition; to enhance the experience of sport
participants, especially children; and to provide psychological assistance with
injury
- Applied sport psychology involves assessment, training and
intervention strategies that enhance an individuals performance and
personal growth
- An athlete’s performance can be facilitated or hindered by his or her
communication skills, assertiveness, anger management, and time
management
What is Sport?
- In order to study sport in a systematic way we have to rely on more than
common knowledge or common sense to distinguish it from related activities
- Most definitions of sport include that it is a physical activity involving
physical skill, prowess and or excretion
- For an activity to be considered a sport it must occur under a particular set
of conditions or circumstances
- Sport, in contrast to play, is done in an organized setting. Sport, unlike play
and exercise, involves competition and physical activity which are formalized
under institutional rules and regulations
- Sport depends on internal and external motivators
- Involvement in sport activities for the pure joy of participation (internal
motivation) and there is the desire to attain recognition and rewards such
as winning medals or championships (external motivation)
- Activity involving only external motivations absent of any intrinsic motivation
may be called a spectacle
Psychological Foundations of Sport Psychology
- Developmental Psychology: optimal learning and performance years; heredity
and environment; maturational processes; childhood and adolescent
experiences; maturity and aging; disabilities
- Personality (Clinical): adjustment problems, motivation, persistence,
direction and effort, psychological attributes and success
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,PSYC 3480 MIDTERM 1 EXAM GUIDE-Psychology of
Sport
- Perception, Learning and Cognition: learning processes and variables,
perceptual and cognitive factors influencing skill acquisition, administration
of
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,PSYC 3480 MIDTERM 1 EXAM GUIDE-Psychology of
Sport
practice sessions, performance variables, human factors or ergonomics,
instructional design, systems models, media usage, individualized learning
approaches
- Social group and organizational behaviour: competition and
cooperation, leadership and management, spectator effects, peer and
culture effects, communication, social dimensions
- Psychometrics measurement: individual differences, group differences,
abilities, aptitudes and skills, personnel selection, prediction of success
Mind-Body Relationship
- Sport involves physical activity but is won in the mind
- In ancient history man accepted mind and body as a unit
- Stone age man believed that diseases and ill fortune came from evil
spirits entering the body
• Healthy bodies and healthy spirits could be recaptured through a
treatment process of exorcism
• As part of a ritual process a shaman (physician) would drill holes into the skill
(trephination) allowing the evil spirit to exit the body
- The Greek civilization (circa B.C 500) was among the first to propose a mind
body split
• Illness was considered to be a function of the body being out of balance with
the four circulating fluids of the body – blood, black bile, yellow bile and
phlegm
• Plato (c. 428-347 B.C) was one of the first Greek philosophers to make a sharp
distinction between the mind and body which in his view were absolutely
separate from eachother (“dualism”)
• Plato believed that humans entered the world with inborn knowledge
called nativism, and the reasoning or rationalism gave us access to this
inborn knowledge sensory experience of the body (empiricism) were not
the major source of knowledge
- In the Middle Ages (AD 500 to 1350) the Christian West believed that disease
and bodily breakdown had a mystical source and were associated with God’s
punishment for evildoing
• The church being the guardian of medical knowledge often cured the body
by drilling evil out, or by insisting on penance through prayer and good
work
- By the Renaissance (AD 1350-1700) technological advances such as microscopy
and other laboratory procedures, theories such as body humours of imbalance
being the cause of illness were put to rest
- The French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
proposed a dualism in which the body was said to be an ‘animal machine’ and
was not subject to moral principles
• Reasoning, decision making and thinking were based on the operation of
the soul, or human mind
• Descartes’ famous statement “I think, therefore I am” showed how reasoning
proved to his satisfaction that he existed
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, PSYC 3480 MIDTERM 1 EXAM GUIDE-Psychology of
Sport
- Bodily factors, in particular disease of cells rather thant the mind became the
focus of concern for physicians whereas the mind became the concern of
philosophers and theologians
- Present day, mind-body are part of the same integrated system – monism
- Monism contend that mind and its mental states are the products of the brain all
thoughts and actions have a physical, material base; generalizing these arguments
to sport psychology, sport performance depend upon an interaction between
biological (body) and social psychological and cognitive factors ) mind_
Ethical Principles
- Use of steroids in the Olympics first caught the world’s attention following
the games of the 1970s and 1980s
- Steroid-type drugs similar to naturally occurring body chemical testosterone
are known to boost muscle-growth
- German athletes were given steroids, and the doubled the amount of medals they
had, many of the athletes had hormonal changes, live damage, abnormal growth
of body and facial features and death
- Cheating can also extend to officials 2002 Salt Lake (Canadians lost in
figure skating due to vote swamping between French-Russians)
- Michael Josephson states that Gamesmanship (as opposed to
Sportsmanship) holds the following values:
1. All that matters is winning. It is okay to bend, evade or break the rules in
order to get a competitive advantage. Its part of the game
2. Its only cheating if you get caught
3. Ethical standards are not absolutes regarding what should or should not be
considered acceptable. Instead, standards are followed by pragmatic
criterion, that is, what works determines guidelines for you.
4. Gamesmanship justifies faking an injury to draw a penalty, getting a head
start on ones opponent, inflicting intentional pair or injury in order to
intimidate opponents.
- Sportsmanship model holds that the way the game is played is judged against
the ethical principles of honour, dignity and fairness
Philosophy of Winning
1. Winning isn’t everything, nor is it the only thing. Young athletes cannot get
the most out of sports if they think that that the only objective is to beat their
opponents
2. Failure is not the same thing as losing. It is important that athletes do not
value losing as a sign of failure or as a threat to their personal value
3. Success is not equivalent to winning. Neither success nor failure need
depend on the outcome of a contest or on a won-lost record. Winning and
losing pertain to the outcome of a contest, where success and failure do not.
4. Athletes should be taught that success is found is striving for victory (success
is related to effort). Never ‘loser’ if you give maximum effort
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