Sports Psychology

SPS 135- Introduction to Kinesiology

Learning outcome (lo)
At the end of the class, students should be able to :
• Identify the scope of sport psychology
• Describe the personality of athletes, level of
arousal and anxiety
• Explain the importance of Inverted-U theory
• Identify effect of biofeedback, exercise addiction,
familiarization to the athletes
The Scope of Sport Psychology
• Cognitive Sport Psychology
• Social Sport Psychology
• Personality
• Exercise Psychology
• Experimental Sport Psychology
• Psychometric Sport Psychology
• Clinical Sport Psychology
Personality
• America’s first sport psychologist, Coleman Griffith, was
among the first to study the relationship between
personality and performance
• There is some evidence that athletes in different types of
sports have different personalities
• i.e.: personality of athletes in team sports is different
from individual sports (Schurr, Ashley, & Joy, 1977)
• Among volleyball, rugby, and handball players, attacking
players are often more emotionally unstable and
extroverted than defensive players (Kirkcaldy, 1982).
Personality
• In general, athletes often exhibit higher levels of
extroversion and lower levels of anxiety than nonathletes
(Kane, 1980)
• A model has been suggested that involves an interaction
between an athlete’s personality and the environment in
which the athlete is involved-the interactional approach
• One of successful models of psychologic profiles of elite
athletes is called the Mental Health Model

Extroversion -
the directing of one's interest outwards, esp towards social contacts
Personality
• A test called Profile of Mood States (POMS) is used to
assess levels of tension, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue,
and confusion
• The POMS shows that elite athletes usually score below
average on variables like tension and depression, but
above average on vigor.
The inverted-u theory
The Optimal Level of Arousal
• Most people perform their best at particular motivation
or arousal level
• When a competitor is inadequately motivated, optimal
performance is not achieved
• But neither is the best effort produced by being too
highly aroused
• i.e.: performers activities like bowling or golf need to
perform precision activities
• Violinist, the wrong muscle twitch at the wrong time can
spell the difference between a beautiful sound and wrong
note
Inverted-u theory
• It is often called the Inverted-U Theory because of the
shape of the curve
• predicts that optimal performance requires an optimal
level of arousal
• If arousal level too low, then the performer is
inadequately motivated, or perhaps bored
• If arousal level is too high, then performance also suffers
Figure…
• The shape of inverted-U curve may vary for different
individuals
• Some may require little motivation and perhaps perform
better when fully relaxed and at low end of arousal scale
• Other individuals may benefit from some pre-
performance activity that increase motivation and
arousal
anxiety
• Anxiety occurs when arousal levels get too high
• Individuals who exhibit high levels of trait anxiety have a
feature of their personality in which they are normally
anxious
• State anxiety is a measure of how anxious a person feels
at a particular time
• A person could have a normally relaxed personality, but
get really shaken by a stressful game situation
• High-trait anxiety players have to be calmed down, low-
trait anxiety players have to be activated
Figure…
anxiety
• Different kinds of activities may also call for some
change in the shape of the inverted-U theory
• Rugby that involves large muscle groups, little fine motor
skill, and high aggression might require higher arousal
levels
• Golf putting might require lower arousal levels or some
relaxation technique (Fig. 12-4)
Figure…
Controlling stress
• One important technique that uses the autonomic
nervous system to control stress and enhance relaxation
involves biofeedback
• Biofeedback is the process through which individuals
control their own physiologic processes
• Our thoughts and emotions can control heart rate, blood
pressure, skin temperature, respiration rate, muscle
electrical activity, brain rhythms, even levels of
hormones circulating in the blood
• Biofeedback techniques were first developed for therapeutic
purposes, to control stress and other problem
Exercise addiction
• Exercise scientists have coined the term exercise
addiction syndrome to describe this clinical disorder in
which the performer is addicted to habitual exercise
• Exercise addiction syndrome seems to be more likely in
runners who train long distances than in recreational
runners
• The tendency towards exercise addiction may be greatest
in those athletes whose personality tends toward such
behavior
• i.e.: anorexia nervosa or bulemia
• People who exercise the most tend to have the most
addictive and hard-driving personalities
• May be using exercise as a form of stress reduction
Applications of clinical sport
psychology
Imagery
• Imagery involves the use of visualization procedures to
imagine physical performance, in absence of physical
movement
• It is also termed mental rehearsal or mental practice
• Often useful to improve performance in activities that
require a lot of cognitive activity
• i.e.: learning to fly an airplane is an activity that requires
a lot of cognitive attention as well as motor skill.
• Another use of imagery involves the production of
mental images in an opponent
Psycho-neuromuscular Theory
• The use of imagery duplicates the motor pattern in the
brain, albeit on a smaller scale than with physical
practice
• In the absence of movement then, this theory called the
theory of muscle memory
• Suggest that repeated mental practice allows the
performer to continue to activate the same brain systems
involved in movement
Symbolic Learning Theory
• Imagery that allows the individual to practice the cognitive
or symbolic elements of a motor task
• Assumes that improvement from mental rehearsal is due to
the idea of thinking about task rather than activating the
proper muscles in the proper sequence
Arousal or Activation Theory
• Suggests that immediately prior to competition
• May be able to improve performance by thinking about it
and thus reaching the right level of motivation on inverted-
U arousal curve
Bioinformational or Information Processing Theory
• Uses our knowledge of information processing and motor
learning to generate a pattern of movement
• Imagery might involve the activation of long-term memory
to enhance the pathways involved in the mental production
of movement
Familiarization
• Individuals may perform better when surrounding are
familiar than when the surroundings are new and
strange
• One reason a “home court” advantage may exist is
because of familiarization- the performers are
accustomed to a familiar environment
Sport psychology in injury prevention
and rehabilitation
Staleness
• Too much training can be physically stressful and result
in a degradation in performance
• Muscle may not have a chance to recover sufficiently
between training sessions
• i.e.: triathletes(running, cycling, swimming)
• Both physiologic performance and the psychologic
readiness to compete may suffer intense training
• During intense overtraining, athletes may manifest the
staleness syndrome
• Staleness can be detected by mood changes, sleep disorder,
loss of appetite, and mental depression
• The quality of athletic performance reaches a plateau or may
actually get worse
• Endurance athletes are especially prone to suffer from
staleness due to long periods of training and repetitive
nature of training involved
Video
The end