1.
Discuss how sports psychology developed as a discipline in the field
including how different countries contributed to shape it.
Sport psychology as a discipline rose mainly from Europe, in Germany. The first sport
psychology laboratory was founded by Dr. Carl Diem in Berlin, in the early 1920s, and the
first recorded study in sport psychology took place at the close of the nineteenth century.
Norman Triplett (1898) performed what is often cited as the first experiment in social
psychology as well as the first in sport psychology.
Triplett investigated the phenomenon of social facilitation (how social settings such as
the presence of others affect personal performance).
One of his most significant works demonstrated how bicyclists were more likely to
cycle faster with a pacemaker or a competitor, which has been foundational in the
literature of social psychology and social facilitation.
The early years of sport psychology were also highlighted by the formation of the College of
Physical Education in Berlin, Germany by Robert Werener Schulte in 1920, and a year later,
in 1921, Schulte published his work, ‘Body and Mind in Sport’.
In Russia, sport psychology experiments began as early as 1925 at institutes of
physical research in Moscow and Leningrad, and formal sport psychology
departments were formed around 1930.
In North America, early years of sport psychology included isolated studies of motor
behavior, social facilitation, and habit formation. During the 1890s, E. W. Scripture
conducted a range of behavioral experiments, including measuring the reaction time
of runners, thought time in school children, and the accuracy of an orchestra
conductor's baton.
Coleman Griffith ,considered as America's first sport psychologist and titled as
the Father of Sport Psychology, founded the first sport psychology university
courses such as "Psychology and Athletics" at the University of Illinois in 1923. His
two major works during the time: The Psychology of Coaching (1926) and The
Psychology of Athletics (1928).
Griffith made numerous contributions to the field of sport psychology as he devoted himself
to research. His most notable beliefs were on how field studies such as athlete and coach
interviews could provide a more thorough understanding of how psychological principles
play out in competitive situations. Griffith delineated the roles of a sport psychologist. He
mentioned this in his work "Psychology and its relation to athletic competition”, published in
1925. He is also known as "The prophet without disciples", since none of his students
continued with sport psychology, and his work started to receive attention only from the
1960s.
Sport psychology flourished first in Europe, where in 1965, the First World Congress
of Sport Psychology met in Rome, Italy which gave rise to the International Society
of Sport Psychology (ISSP), a prominent organization in the field of sport psychology
after the Third World Congress of Sport Psychology in 1973. Additionally, the
European Federation of Sport Psychology was founded in 1968.
In North America, support for sport psychology grew out of physical education. The
North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity
(NASPSPA) grew from being an interest group to a full-fledged organization, whose
mission included promoting the research and teaching of motor behavior and the
psychology of sport and exercise. In Canada, the Canadian Society for Psychomotor
Learning and Sport Psychology (SCAPPS) was founded in 1977 to promote the study
and exchange of ideas in the fields of motor behaviour and sport psychology.
The first journal, The Journal of Sport Psychology came out in 1979; and in 1985,
several applied sport psychology practitioners, headed by John Silva, believed an
organization was needed to focus on professional issues in sport psychology, and
therefore formed the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology
(AAASP).
The American Psychological Association (APA) signed a petition to create Division
47 in 1986, which is focused on Exercise and Sport Psychology. Sport Psychology
started to become visible at the Olympic games in 1984, when the Olympic teams
began to hire sport psychologists for their athletes, and in 1985, the U.S. team
employed their first permanent sport psychologist.
For the Summer Olympics in 1996, the U.S. already had over 20 sport psychologists
working with their athletes. The International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) was
established in 1965 and by the 1970s, sports psychology had been introduced to
university course offerings throughout North America.
In 1986, the American Psychological Association officially recognised sport
psychology as a branch of psychology,
By 1993, the British Psychological Society formed a Sport and Exercise Psychology
Section, which has now become a full division of the society.
References:-
1) Introduction and History of Sports Psychology. [PDF]
2) Gould, D., & S.Weinberg, R.(2011). Foundation of Sport and Exercise Psychology
(5th ed.)
2) The personality profile of a successful sportsperson.
A sport psychologist should be aware of the personality of their clients even their core
personalities, to understand how the client reacts behaviourally and emotionally to different
situations to help assess their needs better in order to reach the client’s max potential in their
performance. It is in my opinion that certain personality factors weigh in for greater success
such as being goal oriented helps in creating a set motivation and coping well with
situations is more effectively done by adopting a flexible nature to different situations. I
believe that another important personality trait that’s linked with good performance is a sense
of self confidence and healthy self-esteem. A study by Steca, Baretta, Greco, et al. (2018)
helped clarify the relationship between personality traits, sports participation and athletic
success with respect to the ‘Big Five Personality’ trait factors and the results helped conclude
that the more successful athletes showed higher agreeableness, conscientiousness, and
emotional stability than the less successful athletes. Sepasi, Nourbakhsh, & Aghaei (2012)
concluded that the three predictors of better health in terms of personality factors were
extraversion, adaptability, and motive. It is suggested that psychological functioning of
disabled athletes in individual and team sports might be enhanced through active participation
in athletic events.[2] From previous research papers, I can regard that an athlete should have
a general, overall sense of self-regulation by adopting some important cognitive strategies
such as managing their anxiety (arousal) levels, changing their tactics, sense of control
regarding life situations, exercising their goal oriented motivation and skill, using
psychological -physiological techniques of muscle tension relaxation, positive
visualization. Coping in sport also plays a huge role in terms of behavioural traits that make
up the personality of the athlete. Crocker, Tamminen, & Gaudreau (2015) focused on coping
as both an individual and group level construct while also considering the gender and socio-
cultural context in terms of the different coping mechanisms, quantitative and qualitative
assessment of the individual, conceptualizations and interpersonal emotion regulation. DE
Vries (2020) studied how certain sport traits are more specialized to the demands of the type
of sport/play and that personality factors that make up a successful fit will depend upon the
type of sport they are required to excel in. This is the person-environment fit (P-E) and its
hypothesis maintains that people are attracted to specific environments of particular
sports that are compatible with their personality. The study is supported from the
assumption that there are higher chances of exhibiting better performance when the player’s
traits are suited to the environment. A drawback of this specific research is it lacks the cross-
cultural verification and the desirable sport personality traits may differ across different
cultures due to the cultural influence.
References:-
(1) Steca, P., Baretta, D., Greco, A., D'Addario, M., & Monzani, D. (2018). Associations between
personality, sports participation and athletic success. A comparison of Big Five in sporting
and non-sporting adults. Personality and Individual Differences, 121, 176-183.
(2) Sepasi, H., Nourbakhsh, P., & Aghaei, H. (2012). A Comparison of Sport Personality
Characteristics and Mental Health Dimensions of Disabled and Non-disabled Male
Athletes. International Journal of Health, Wellness & Society, 2(3).
(3) Crocker, P. R., Tamminen, K. A., & Gaudreau, P. (2015). Coping in sport.
(4) De Vries, R. E. (2020). The main dimensions of sport personality traits: A lexical
approach. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 2211.
