sport psychology theories Flashcards
to learn sport psychology theories
what is the need achievement theory?
The need achievement theory states that all athletes can be put in two categories. NACH (need to achieve, these athletes don’t shrink from challenges and don’t compare themselves to others much) NAF (afraid of failing and stay in their comfort zone and compare themselves to others frequently
Achievement Goal Theory
Suggests there are three factors to motivation of athletes. Achievement Goals, Perceived Ability and Achievement Behaviours. According to this theory, in order to understand the athletes motivation one must understand the athletes past failures and achievements. Therefore we need to look at achievement goals, either Task oriented or outcome oriented goals
Self determination Theory
Created by two psychologists, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. It allowed sports psychologists to understand dropout rates and wellbeing in coaches and athletes. Athletes require three things to be motivated, Competence, Relatedness and Autonomy
Weiners attribute theory
This theory places all successes and failures into three categories.
Stability - why was it un/stable
Causality - is the reason in/ex ternal
Control - is the reason under control of the individual
Mastery Climate
Mastery climate sometimes known as the task oriented climate. Is a motivational climate which focuses on mastery of tasks. Helps improving motivation by improving attitudes, effort and learning techniques.
Competitive Climate
competitive climate, otherwise known as a outcome oriented climate focuses primarily on competitive outcomes.
Competition is encouraged and only those of the highest ability are praised, this may lead to athletes feeling they are punished for their mistakes. This often leads to less effort and consistency from athletes and then failure is attributed to lack of ability
Bandura’s social learning theory
Bandura’s social learning theory suggests that personality is not a stable characteristic, but it is
constantly changing as a result of experiences and different social situations. It states individuals learn in
sporting situations through two processes
Drive Theory
arousal/performance relationship increases proportionally to each other
inverted U
as arousal increases so does performance until it reaches a optimal point after which any increases in arousal leads to a decrease in performance
catastrophy
more complex U theory
each athlete has an optimal arousal level after which any increase leads to a catastrophic decrease in performance as supposed to a steady decline. it also involves cognitive anxiety
IZOF
each individual athlete has an optimal range for each individual sport and they different from athlete to athlete and from sport to sport
multidimensional anxiety theory
suggests somatic and cognitive anxiety can affect performance in different ways and will change in the build up to an event generally cognitive anxiety is thought to decrease performance while somatic anxiety is thought to enhance performance.
slightly elevated levels of cognitive anxiety can enhance performance
reversal theory
suggests that it is the perception of anxiety that can effect performance for example if an athlete perceives the symptoms of anxiety as potitive they are more likely to enhanve performance this explains why some sport psychologists highlight the role of some signs and symptoms of somatic anxiety
instinct theory
instinct to be aggressive that builds up until we can release it. Little research based evidence, this theory is rarely used to explain causes of aggression
banduras learning theory
aggression is a trait we learn from watching aggression of others around us and experiencing reinforcement of such behaviours
