Catastrophe model example: 2011 IAAF Daegu World Athletics Championships - Mens 100m

Psychology: Attitudes

Definition
"a combination of beliefs and feelings about objects, people or situations which predispose us to behave in a certain way towards them"

Triadic model
3 components of an attitude

1. Cognitive - knowledge (e.g. training is good for me and keeps me fit)
2. Affective - emotions & feelings (e.g. I don't enjoy training)
3. Behavioural - action or intent to act (e.g. I intend to train 3 times per week)

Formation
Attitudes are formed entirely from socialisation.
The following people have an effect on our attitudes:

• parents
• role models
• peers
• siblings
• teachers
• coaches
• famous people
• powerful people

Conditioning of past experiences and familiarity with an object will also affect our attitudes.

Measuring attitudes

• Interviews
• Observations
• Questionnaires (Thrustone, Likert, Osgood's and Semantic Differential scales)

Good attitudes
Attitudes influences behaviour and therefore a good attitude can lead to an improvement in motivation, happiness and performance. A good attitude can also develop social norms and values of society.

Bad attitudes
Stereotype: a standardised social image expecting people to behave in a certain way due to them belonging to a certain group.
Prejudice: an extreme attitude that is pre-judged and influences behaviour.
Discrimination: unjust treatment of people based on prejudicial views.

Changing attitudes
Persuasive communication
To change an attitude, a person must attend to, understand, accept and retain the message.
Persuader - should be an expert/trusted (role model)
Message - should be clear and balanced between emotion and logic
Recipient - needs to be willing to listen
Situation - can affect the attitude (e.g. others present)
Cognitive dissonance
Humans like consonance (high correlation of thoughts and feelings). Dissonance occurs when there is conflict between feelings, this produces a negative psychological tension and desire to erase the dissonance. Therefore in order to change an attitude we must create dissonance so the person may look to change their whole attitude and get back to consonance. The easiest way to do this is to change one part of the triadic model.

Psychology: Attributions

Definition

“the process of ascribing reasons for, or causes to events & behaviours”

Weiner’s (1972) model

Dimensions

• Locus of causality (internal-----external)
• Stability (stable-----unstable)

Model

Ability: internal-stable, “we were the better team”

Effort: internal-unstable, “I gave it all I had”

Task difficulty: external-stable, “my opponent was too good for me”

Luck: external-unstable, “they had the ref on their side”

Learned helplessness

Failure

Failure is attributed to a lack of ability>>>lower confidence>>>poor performance>>>more likely to fail again>>>failure attributed to a lack of ability...

Success

Success attributed to luck>>>no increase in confidence>>>poor performance>>>more likely to fail>>>success attributed to luck...

Feeling that:

• failure is inevitable
• even when success is possible
• this leads to the performer giving up easily

Learned helplessness is typically associated with low achievers who are outcome orientated.
Can be specific - one sport/one aspect of a sport.
Or can be global - all sports.

Attribution retraining
Coaches can help performers who are in a state of learned helplessness by using attribution retraining. This involves ascribing suitable attributions for failure and success in order to improve performance in the future.

1. Make controllable (internal/unstable) attributions. If you can control the reasons for success/failure you can do something about it. You will also improve performance. This is because the performer is more likely to behave the same following success and differently following failure.
2. Self serving bias. Protect self-confidence by attributing success to internal factors (ability) and failure to external factors (luck).

Psychology: Achievement Motivation (Competitiveness)

McClelland - Atkinson model (1976)
Based on the combination of two personality constructs:

1. Need to achieve (Nach): the capacity to experience pride or satisfaction in accomplishment
2. Need to avoid failure (Naf): the capacity to experience shame or humiliation in defeat

Both Nach and Naf motivate us to try harder and we all possess both characteristics - in varying degrees...

High achievers (high Nach low Naf)
See success as important & seek out challenging situations. They strive hard for success without worrying about failure.

Low achievers (low Nach high Naf)
Worry about failure more than striving for success - success would be nice but they prefer to avoid failure & the anxiety associated with achievement situations.

High achiever characteristics:

• persistent
• seek challenge
• similar ability opponents
• confident
• congratulate themselves when win
• failure leads to them asking themselves how they can improve
• enjoy feedback
• focus on performance

How can coaches develop "Approach Behaviour"

• positive experiences
• gradually increasing task difficulty
• goal setting
• use positive feedback and praise/support from significant others
• reduce punishment
• encourage risk taking
• use attributions correctly
• develop high levels of self efficacy/avoid learned helplessness

Goal orientation
Outcome (competitive) - focuses on comparing performance against & defeating others. The problem with this is we cannot control others performance. This can result in reduced motivation even when personal performance is good.
Task (mastery) - focuses on comparing performance with personal standards & improvement. This makes success easier to achieve & to feel good about themselves, therefore improving motivation. Therefore task orientation is recommended.

Situational factors

1. Probability of success (task difficulty)
2. Incentive value of success (how rewarding the success is to the performer)

Inversely proportional - when one is high the other is low.
Situational component: highest when 50% chance of success.

Psychology: Personality

Definitions of personality
"the sum total of an individual's characteristics which make them unique" (Hollander, 1971)
"those characteristics of a person that account for consistent patterns of behavior" (Pervin, 1993)

Theories of personality
Trait (Nature) Theories
B=F(P)

• Personality is made up of genetically inherited traits (characteristics)
• These traits are stable and enduring
• They imply consistency & generability in behavior

Critisisms of Trait theory
Advantages: children are like their parents
Disadvantages: mood, changes after a life event, changes in different environments

Examples of Trait theories

Girdano's Narrow Band Theory (Type A v Type B personality types)
Type A: people are irritable, anxious and competitive. They like control & work fast. They have a strong desire to succeed. Research has shown Type A people to be more prone to heart disease.
Type B: people are calm, relaxed, quiet and focused. They work slowly & and are less likely to become stressed.

Cattell's 16 Personality Factors
Cattell identified 16 different and independent traits that make up personality, such as;
Shy------------------Bold
Concrete thinking------------------Abstract thinking
Submissive------------------Dominant
Practical------------------Impractical
Relaxed------------------Tense

Eysenck's Trait theory
Eysenck focuses on 2 dimensional traits:
Extroversion (seeks attention, enjoys being ) <<<>>> Introversion (happy in own company, work alone)
Neurotic (unstable happy at one point then sad at the next) <<<>>> Stable (predictable, reliable)

Bandura's Social Learning (Nurture) Theory
B=F(E)

• Bandura suggests we learn behaviour through experience in the environment - behaviour can be predicted by the state of the environment
• This suggests sport "shapes" personality

Principles

1. Modeling - copying the behavior of somebody else
2. Reinforcement - reinforced modelled behaviour is more likely to be repeated

Interactionist theory
B=F(PE)

• Combination of trait & social learning theories
• Behaviour is predicted by the interaction of personality traits with the environmental situation
• This is the most likely/realistic explanation

Same environment = same behaviour
Change environment = change behaviour

Hollander's structure of personality (1971)
3 levels - more permeable away from the centre

1. Psychological core
2. Typical response
3. role related behaviour

Personality profiling

Questionnaires
Advantages: easy to administer, cheap to produce, produce lot of data,can be used anywhere, usually reliable
Disadvantages: lack of validity as difficult to define what personality is, misinterpretation of questions, answers may not be truthful / provide socially desirable answers, questions may not allow for full answers, biased questions, situation when completed may not be ideal


Interview
Advantages: greater validity than questionnaires, can gather more detailed answers

Disadvantages: lower reliability due to different answers, depends on skill of interviewer to ask relevant questions & interpret answers, expensive and time consuming


Observation
Advantages: personality profile can be built up over period of time, high ecological validity as takes place in "real life"
Disadvantages: subjective, reliant on skill of the observer, time consuming / expensive / needs to be completed several times, observer needs to know normal behaviour patterns of performer for comparison, may need several observers (at the same time), if performer knows observation is occurring they may behave differently

Morgan's Profile Of Mood States (POMS)
Suggests "mental health" is a predictor of success in sport. This research found successful sports performers to possess high positive mental health characteristics (vigour) and low negative mental health characteristics (tension, depression etc.) compared to less successful athletes and the general population. These results are known as the "iceberg profile" due to the shape of the graph.
Measures:

1. vigour
2. fatigue
3. tension
4. anger
5. depression
6. confusion

Problems:

• measures mood not personality
• mood can change
• don't know what the dependent is
• not all successful athletes have the iceberg profile
• many unsuccessful athletes have the profile
• problems with questionnaires
• not suprising that negative mental health is associated with poor performance

Using personality profiling in sport
Credulous approach
Suggests we should use personality profiling to identify top performers.
Sceptical approach
Suggests there are other more important factors that determine performance (ability, physical capacity, skill etc.) so we should not use personality profiling to identify potential top performers.

Psychology: Introduction to Sport Psychology

Approaches in sport psychology
2 main standpoints:
Nature (trait) theories

• we are born with abilities
• these abilities are genetically inherited/innate
• they are therefore stable and enduring
• we are naturally good or bad at skills

Nurture (social learning) theories

• we are made by developing abilities into skills
• we learn these skills through our experience
• the environment/situation we are in determines our behavior
• we become experts through practice