Week One Flashcards
What is sport and exercise psychology
The scientific study of people and their behaviours in sport and exercise context and the practical application of that knowledge (Gill, Williams, & Reifsteck, 2017).
What is applied sport psychology
Identifying and understanding psychological theories and techniques that can be applied to sport and exercise to enhance performance and personal growth of participants
What do sport and exercise psychologists do?
Contemporary sport and exercise psychologists engage in different roles, including conducting research, teaching, and consulting with athletes and exercisers.
What is the difference between scientific and professional practice knowledge?
Sport and exercise psychology is above all a science. For this reason you need to understand the basic scientific process and how scientific knowledge is developed. Scientific knowledge alone, however, is not enough to guide professional practice. You must also understand how professional practice knowledge develops.
How is experimental and scientific knowledge integrated?
Scientific knowledge must be integrated with the knowledge gained from professional practice. Integrating scientific and professional practice knowledge will greatly benefit you as you work in applied sport and exercise settings.
What are the different orientations in the field of sport psychology?
Several approaches can be taken to sport and exercise psychology, including the psychophysiological, social–psychological, and cognitive–behavioral orientations. Psychophysiological sport psychologists study physiological processes of the brain and their influence on physical activity. Social–psychological sport psychologists focus on how complex interactions between the social environment and personal makeup of the athlete or exerciser influence behavior. Cognitive–behavioral sport psychologists examine how an individual’s thoughts determine behavior.
What makes up personality and why is it important?
Personality refers to the characteristics or blend of characteristics that makes individuals unique. It comprises three separate but related levels: a psychological core, the most basic and stable level of personality; typical responses, or the ways each person learns to adjust to the environment; and role-related behaviors, or how a person acts based on what she perceives the situation to be. Role-related behavior is the most changeable aspect of personality. Understanding personality will help you improve your teaching and coaching effectiveness.
What are the six major approaches to understanding personality?
Six major routes to studying personality in sport and exercise are the psychodynamic, trait, situation, interactional, phenomenological, and integrative, or biopsychosocial, approaches. The psychodynamic approach emphasizes the importance of unconscious determinants of behavior and of understanding the person as a whole. It has had little impact in sport psychology. The trait approach assumes that personality is enduring and consistent across situations and that psychological traits predispose individuals to behave in consistent ways regardless of the situation. In contrast, the situational approach argues that behavior is determined largely by the environment or situation. Neither the trait nor the situational approach has received widespread support in the sport psychology literature. Most researchers take an interactional approach to the study of sport personality, which considers personal and situational factors as equal determinants of behavior. The phenomenological approach focuses on a person’s understanding and subjective interpretation of himself and his environment versus fixed traits. This highly held view is also consistent with the interactional view in that behavior is believed to be determined by personal and situational factors. The integrative, or biopsychosocial, approach contends that to understand personality, one needs to consider the dynamic interaction of biological factors, dispositional traits, adaptions one makes to situations, and self-defined life stories or narratives that are all situated in one’s social context or culture.
How can personality be measured?
To measure personality, an interactional approach should assess both psychological traits (an individual’s typical style of behaving) and states (the situation’s effects on behaviors). Although general personality scales provide some useful information about personality states and traits, situation-specific measures (e.g., sport-specific measures) predict behavior more reliably.
What is the relationship between personality and behavior in sport and exercise?
Exercise has been found to enhance self-concept, especially the physical component of one’s self. Type A behavior has been shown to be an important personality factor influencing wellness. Although some personality differences have been found through comparison of athletes with nonathletes and comparison of athletes from different sports, the most interesting and consistent findings come from comparisons of less successful athletes with more successful athletes exhibiting more positive mental health. These results, however, have limited application.
How do cognitive strategies relate to athletic success?
Over the last several decades, researchers have turned their attention away from measuring traditional traits and toward examining the cognitive or mental strategies, skills, and behaviors that athletes use. Successful athletes, compared with their less successful counterparts, possess a variety of psychological skills. These include arousal regulation and management, high self-confidence, better concentration and focus, feelings of being in control and not forcing things, positive imagery and thoughts, commitment and determination, goal setting, well-developed mental plans, and well-developed coping strategies.
