A Critical Introduction to Sport Psychology
Sport and Performance Psychology
Chapter 1: Introducing sport psychology – Discipline and profession
Introduction
o Many prominent athletes and coaches believe that although sport is played with the body, it
is won in the mind.
o If mental processes are crucial for athletic success, psychologists should be able to help
sports competitors to enhance their athletic performance by providing them with practical
advice on how to do their best when it matters most.
o Increasing numbers of athletes, coaches and teams have turned to sport psychologists in an
effort to gain a winning edge over their rivals.
o The quest to increase psychological strength is apparent in virtually all competitive games, it
is especially evident in mentally demanding individual sports.
o Keefe suggested that one reason why so many professional golfers hire psychologists is
simply that they “need to tell their story to someone” who has little direct involvement in
their lives.
o With the emergence of a new research method called narrative inquiry in sport
psychology, a tool is now available by which to elicit and analyse the “stories” of
athletes’ lives.
o Regardless of whether its origins are pragmatic or therapeutic, athletes’ interest in consulting
psychologists is particularly noticeable at the elite grade of sport performance where
minimal differences exist between competitors in technical ability and/or physical fitness.
o Mental resilience can be developed through appropriate practice and training.
o Research on the “peak performance” experiences of athletes as well as in-depth interviews
with Olympic champions indicate that mental toughness and the ability to concentrate
effectively are among the factors which distinguish top athletes from less successful
counterparts.
o Performance enhancement is not the only goal of sport psychology. It has been increasingly
concerned with the promotion of health and exercise among people of all ages – whether
they are athletic or not.
o Sport psychologists have begun to apply their theories and techniques to business and to
everyday work settings as part of the burgeoning field of coaching psychology.
The mental side of sport
Sport scientists typically distinguish between four hypothetical aspects of athletic performance:
1. Physical: Physical aspects of sport performance refer to phenomena such as fitness, strength
and stamina which can be measured objectively.
2. Technical: Technical aspects of performance refer mainly to the proficiency with which
athletes can execute fundamental skills required by their specialist sport.
3. Tactical: The tactical part of the quadrant concerns strategic aspects of athletic performance,
such as planning and decision making.
4. Psychological
o A way to investigate the mental side of sport is to ask athletes what they have learned from
their personal experience about the mental factors that seem to affect their performance.
Using this, we can gain useful insights into the psychological challenges of team and
individual sports.
o It is hard to be unbiased when editing or analysing interview data. After all, most people
(including scientists) tend to see what they believe – rather than believe what they see. And
, as athletes’ insights are invariably sport-specific, they are rather limited in their generality of
application.
o Researchers often use systematic and objective research strategies to explore mental aspects
of athletic performance.
o In research questionnaires, sport psychology was defined mainly in terms of mental
preparation for competition. In addition, these researchers found that mental toughness was
perceived to be the most important determinant of success in sport.
WHAT IS CONFIDENCE ?
o Confidence, or “the belief that one has the internal resources, particularly abilities, to
achieve success”, is usually correlated positively with peak athletic performance.
o According to Bandura, self-efficacy is the belief that one has the capacity to “execute the
courses of action required to produce given attainments” – or to achieve a specific goal. This
“I can do it” belief is not all pervasive but situation specific.
o Because confidence is largely belief-based rather than fact-based, it requires constant
replenishment.
o Self-confidence is a vital yet fragile ingredient of athletic success.
o Beattie et al. developed the Trait Robustness of Self-Confidence Inventory (TROSCI) to
measure “the ability to maintain confidence beliefs in the face of adversity”.
o Initial psychometric analysis suggests that this scale shows satisfactory internal
consistency, good test–retest reliability and reasonable predictive validity.
o Psychologists identified 6 key strategies to develop robust sport-confidence: logging
evidence, developing understanding and awareness, manipulating the coaching
environment, tailoring interventions for the individual, using psychological skills, and
developing an athlete’s signature strengths and 4 strategies to maintain it: a continuation of
the development process, influence the athlete’s environment, stable beliefs, and reinforcing
abilities.
WHAT IS MENTAL TOUGHNESS? MEANING AND MEASUREMENT
o The term mental toughness is used as a synonym for determination, resilience and/or an
exceptional immunity to pressure situations. It is also described as a characteristic that
enables athletes to react well to adversity and to persist in the face of setbacks.
o Mental toughness is widely regarded as the key to sporting success.
o The results from an interview with elite internal athletes indicated that the athletes believed
that mental toughness develops as a long-term outcome of a complex range of interacting
factors. Among these factors was a motivational climate surrounding the athlete’s training
that was challenging yet enjoyable.
o Clough et al. postulated four key components of mental toughness in their 4Cs model of this
construct.
o Control or the capacity to feel and act as if one could exert an influence in the
situation in question.
o Challenge, which refers to the habit of perceiving potentially stressful situations as
positive opportunities rather than as threats.
o Commitment or stickability.
o Confidence: a component of mental toughness that designates a strong belief in
one’s ability to complete a task successfully.
o Combining these four elements, Clough et al. defined mentally tough athletes as people who
have “a high sense of self-belief and an unshakeable faith that they can control their own
destiny” and who can “remain relatively unaffected by competition or adversity”.
o Another study of mental toughness was carried out by G. Jones et al. using qualitative
research methodology and postulated that it involves having a psychological edge that
, enables an athlete to cope better than opponents with the demands of competitive sport –
thereby remaining focused and in control under pressure.
o Results showed that mental toughness was perceived to comprise both general and specific
components.
o The general component of this construct was a perception of having a “natural or
developed psychological edge” that enables an athlete to cope better than his or her
opponents with competitive lifestyle and training demands.
o The specific components of mental toughness were perceived to be the capacity to
remain more determined, focused, confident and in control than one’s athletic rivals.
→ Mental toughness requires motivation, focus (or concentration), the ability to deal
with pressure and anxiety, and the ability to cope with physical and emotional pain.
o In seeking to enhance mental toughness in young players, coaches emphasized the
importance of developing two characteristics: independence and resourcefulness (through
increasing self-awareness and encouraging reflection).
o The meta-data analysis revealed four key categories:
o Personal characteristics (heightened awareness)
o Interactions within the environment (receiving encouragement from significant
others).
o Progressive development (training in an environment that fosters independence but
also provides necessary support).
o Breadth of experience (significant events/diverse experiences such as overcoming
hardship that, over time, facilitate adaptive and positive growth).
DEVELOPING YOUR CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS
o Only a few of us are skilled at critical thinking - or the ability and willingness to evaluate
claims (whether in science or in everyday life) in an open-minded and careful manner.
o Critical thinking is a “form of intelligent criticism which helps people to reach independent
and justifiable conclusions about their experiences”. It comprises a motivational component
(a disposition to engage in analytical thinking) and a cognitive component (a set of
questioning and reasoning skills).
o The motivation to engage in critical thinking is characterized by the adoption of open-
mindedness, inquisitiveness and scepticism. But, these characteristics must be supplemented
by a “toolbox” of cognitive skills such as analysis, evaluation, inference, deductive reasoning
and inductive reasoning.
o First, interpret or establish the credibility of a source of information. Second, critical reading
requires you to ascertain which camp (fact, theory or faith) an argument belongs to as your
conclusions will need to be grounded in this analysis. Third, you need to establish the validity
and reliability of the information used to support a claim. Fourth, you can use inference to
establish whether there are alternative explanations for the evidence provided. The fifth step
in the critical thinking process is explanation which requires you to determine the most likely
conclusion based on available evidence. The final step is demonstrating the skill of self-
regulation.
WHAT FACTORS INFLUENCE THE MENTAL DEMANDS OF A GIVEN SPORT ?
o Sports differ significantly in the physical demands that they make of performers and
therefore the psychological requirements of different sports also appear to vary widely.
o Among the most important determinants of the psychological demands of any sport are its
nature and structure.
o The structure of a sport can affects its psychological requirements.
o Using this technique of mindfulness, they can learn to adopt a moment-to-moment non-
judgemental awareness that can help them to focus on the here-and-now.
, SPORT PSYCHOLOGY AS AN ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE
o Sport psychology = the application of psychological theory and methods to understand the
performance, mental processes and well-being of people who are involved in sport.
o That individual athletic activity is facilitated by the presence of others became known as
social facilitation and was attributed to the capacity of rival performers to “liberate latent
energy not ordinarily available”.
o Sport psychology is generally regarded as a science. It is committed to the principle that its
claims should be falsifiable or capable of being tested through objective and systematic
methods of empirical inquiry.
o Sport psychology is not just about sport – it involves the study of exercise (physical activity)
as well as of competitive athletic behaviour.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SPORT AND EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY
o Researcher and practitioner Griffith is widely regarded as the progenitor of discipline and had
established the first sport psychology research facility, called the Athletic Research
Laboratory, in the United States in 1925.
o During the 1960s, however, that sport psychology emerged as an independent discipline.
RESEARCH METHODS IN SPORT PSYCHOLOGY
o One way of classifying these techniques is to distinguish between traditional quantitative or
numbers-based methods (where measurement is used to assess the “amount” of something
and where statistical analysis is then applied to make sense of the resulting data) and
qualitative approaches that are concerned more with understanding the meaning of events,
situations and actions for people involved in a given study.
o Grounded theory: whereby a researcher attempts to develop a theory of a phenomenon
from the analysis of a set of qualitative data derived from people’s experience of that
phenomenon.
o Another way to classify research methods in sport and exercise psychology is to distinguish
between descriptive, correlational and experimental techniques.
o The aim of descriptive research is to record and analyse certain aspects of
behaviour, especially in natural settings. Included in this category are such methods
as case study (= an intensive or in-depth analysis of individuals, groups or events),
naturalistic observation (where researchers observe behaviour as it occurs in its own
natural environment), survey research (where information is collected about the
behaviour, experiences or attitudes of many people using a series of questions about
the topic of interest) and psychometric testing (where differences between people
on some psychological construct are assessed using specially designed, standardized
instruments).
o The purpose of correlational research is to measure the relationship or degree of
association between two or more variables.
o The objective of experimental research is to determine cause-and-effect
relationships between two or more variables. Using this method, a researcher tries
to manipulate an independent variable under controlled conditions in order to study
its effects on a dependent variable.
o Single-case research designs are a group of quasi-experimental methods that grew
out of attempts in the applied behaviour analysis tradition to understand an
individual’s behaviour – especially his or her response to an intervention programme.
