Sports Psychology exam 2

Developing New Strategies

- Athletes who are focused on achieving particular goals may also need to learn new strategies for achieving such goals. Additional Explanations - Goal setting may increase team cohesion, which in turn improves performance outcomes.

Understanding the Goal Setting-Performance Link

- Goal setting has a positive effect on performance across many sports. - Goal setting is the most common mental skill used by injured athletes in their recovery.

Set Both Training and Competition Goals

- Teams practice far more than they compete, so having practice goals is an important way to maintain motivation during practice and make improvements. - Wanlin, Hrycaiko, Martin, & Mahon (1997) found that speed skaters who start a goal setting program complete more laps and drills in practice, and show fewer off-task behaviors, which in turn should lead to better performance in competitions.

Self-handicapping

- adopting or claiming impediments to success as a way of maintaining self-esteem. Those who are low in self-esteem are especially likely to engage in self-handicapping. - Athletes who focus on mastery goals show greater sportsmanship than those who focus on performance goals, and tend to like their teammates and coach more. Athletes who are focused on performance goals show more willingness to break a rule, lie to an official, and cheat, and are more likely to engage in aggressive and anti-social behavior in an attempt to outperform both opponents and teammates. - Social approval goal orientation: focused on the desire for social acceptance and avoiding embarrassment and defeat, may be particularly important for interactive and team-sport athletes.

Research generally demonstrates that athletes who are intrinsically motivated

- report higher levels of enjoyment of and commitment to their sport. Intrinsic motivation is also a better predictor of participation in a particular sport, and leads to higher levels of performance. - Athletes who are intrinsically motivated are more likely to experience flow, and are more likely to practice.

Types of reinforcers

material reinforcers (ribbons, medals, t-shirts, awards), social rewards (praise and gestures), activity rewards (day off from practice, scrimmage instead of drills), outings (seeing a movie, having a party).

Identified regulation

means being motivated by external factors but feeling personal choice over participation.

Self-Efficacy is influenced by four factors:

- A person's own experiences - Vicarious experiences -Observational learning -Verbal persuasion -Athletes' own emotional and physiological states

Drive Theory (Understanding the Arousal/Anxiety-Performance Link)

- As arousal increases, so does performance (Hull, 1943, 1951; Spence, 1956). - In this model, arousal is usually caused by situational factors, but the model does not distinguish between somatic and cognitive anxiety. - Athletes' skill level influences the association between arousal and performance. Athletes who are new to a skill or sport will generally perform better under conditions of low arousal. Experienced athlete will generally perform better under conditions of high arousal (Performance = Habit X Drive [arousal]). - In a study by Jackson, Buglione, & Glenwick (1988), MLB players who were being traded showed lower batting averages and slugging percentages before the trade compared to their averages in the three prior years, and after the trade, players showed positive effects of being traded on both measures, which were maintained over the next year. - Keep in mind that correlation does not equal causation!

Recognize Individual Differences

- Athletes are motivated by different strategies (having fun, making friends, winning scholarships, losing weight, learning new skills, gaining status, etc.). - Motives may change over time, even within the course of a season.

Give Positive and Personal Feedback

- Athletes need feedback about their performance, which helps mark progress towards goals and demonstrates that coaches are genuinely interested in helping them learn and improve, which increases intrinsic motivation. - Verbal and non-verbal praise can help motivate. - Coaches need to use specific types of feedback when the want to help athletes change their behavior. This type of feedback is empathic, gives choices, provides clear and attainable objectives, includes specific solutions to improve performance, and delivered in a respectful tone of voice. - When players receive positive feedback, they see that the coach valued their hard work, realized that mistakes are part of learning, and believed that their high effort will lead to improved performance over time. - Coaches need to give personal feedback whenever possible so that athletes recognize their own individual contributions are noted.

Directing Attention

- Athletes who set goals know how to focus their attention on a particular aspect of the game. During practices, athletes can focus intensely on the skills necessary to achieve the goals they have set. - Vidic & Burton (2010) examined the effects of an 8-week goal setting intervention on female Division I tennis players. The program led to a number of benefits for athletes, including increases in motivation, self-confidence, and performance.

Increase Goal Commitment

- Athletes who show greater commitment to their goals are more likely to successfully accomplish such goals, and thus show higher levels of performance (Klein, Wesson, Hollenbeck, & Alge, 1999). - Athletes can set their own goals, rather than accepting the goals set by coaches, parents, or teammates (Weinberg, Burke, & Jackson, 1997). This allows athletes to internalize goals, which helps motivate goal pursuit. - Self-set goals, or goals created cooperatively, improve motivation, persistence, and performance more than assigned goals (Kyllo & Landers, 1995; Locke, 1991; Ntoumanis et al., 2014). - Coach-set goals can be effective, as long as athletes internalize these goals and truly want to achieve them (Fairall & Rodgers, 1997).

**Impact on Youth**

- Atkins, Johnson, Force, & Petrie (2015) surveyed 12 to 15 year-old boys, assessing the types of messages they received from others about the motivational climate of their main sports team. The boys also rated their own self-esteem, port competence, sport enjoyment, and intentions to continue playing their main sport. Boys who perceived a task-focused motivational climate reported higher levels of all measures as well as greater intentions to continue playing their sport.

Recognize Barriers to Goal Achievement

- Barriers can be stress, fatigue, lack of time, academic pressures, social relationships, lack of confidence, too many goals, lack of goal feedback, and family/work responsibilities. - Coaches have identified lack of team cohesion, injury, and lack of conditioning as barriers to goal achievement.

Impact of Environment on Motivation

- Coaches can create a mastery-focused environment by emphasizing working hard, developing skills, showing improvement over time, and valuing each athlete's role. Mastery-Focused environments lead to higher levels of perceived competence, self-esteem, enjoyment, intrinsic motivation, and the experience of flow. - Performance-focused environments emphasizing outperforming others, avoiding making mistakes, and rewarding only the top athletes. Such environments lead to extrinsic motivation, pressure, anxiety, use of maladaptive coping strategies. - Athletes' goal orientation can change over time based on the climate they are in.

Emphasize Effort, Not Outcome

- Coaches should focus on developing all athletes' skills (not just the best players), rewarding improvements over time, and emphasizing the importance of effort. - This type of focus helps athletes believe that their coach expects they can do well and increases intrinsic motivation, which in turn leads to better performance. - Emphasizing effort instead of outcome reduces pressure on athletes.

Self-Efficacy Theory (Theories of Achievement Motivation)

- Describes the importance of having a belief in one's own ability to carry out a given task - Self-confidence refers to a person's overall view of him or herself as being generally capable, self-efficacy refers to a person's self-confidence within a specific domain. - People with high self-efficacy are more likely to exert effort, and in a given domain will set more challenging goals and persist longer in the face of a challenge.

Provide Goal Feedback and Support

- Even if athletes set their own goals, receiving feedback on their success in reaching those goals is a helpful way of motivating goal setting and helping athletes persist in their efforts (Locke & Latham, 1985, 1990). - Athletes need support for their goal pursuit from other people, including parents, friends, and coaches. - When athletes see their coaches as supportive and encouraging, they show greater motivation to pursue their goals, which predicts goal attainment. - The support athletes tend to receive is focused on outcome goals. Athletes should encourage people to express support or lower level goals.

Flow

- Flow is a positive state in which a person feels a balance between the challenges of the situation and their skills to cope with these challenges. - Athletes who are in a state of flow experience a very positive state, in which they are fully absorbed in their performance, have no sense of time passing, and achieve positive results. - Studies show that athletes who are in a state of flow show better performance, and flow is associated with higher level performance in team sports, but being in a state of flow does not guarantee outstanding performance. - Bakker et al. (2011) found that a team of elite young soccer players reported higher levels of flow in games when there was a win or tie, and also that players who received positive feedback and support from the coach during the game reported higher levels of flow, which resulted in more positive performance ratings by both athletes and the coach. - Flow can be achieved by mental and physical preparation, self-confidence, focus, positive attitude, and motivation. Athletes may vary in their ability to achieve flow. Athletes who are intrinsically motivated are more likely to experience flow. Optimism and hardiness may also be a factor in flow. - More experienced athletes, who are able to rely on automatic processing to perform, are more likely to achieve flow. Learning a new sport or skill takes considerably effort, and the intense concentration makes it nearly impossible to achieve flow. - Research is correlational-and the flow-performance link is not known. Athletes experiencing flow may actually perform better, or perhaps playing well makes athletes feel as though they are in a state of flow. Another possibility is that there is a third variable, such as training, quality of coaching, or personality. The mere pursuit of flow may be as beneficial as actually achieving a flow state.

Performance Goals (types of goals)

- Focus on achieving a particular endpoint or standard. - Focus on a particular outcome, regardless of how other teams or competitors perform; relatively independent of how other teams or competitors perform; focus on individual achievements. - Include running a mile in a given amount of time, striking out a certain number of batters, or scoring a specific number of points in a basketball game.

Outcome Goals (types of goals)

- Focus on competitive results of an event, and typically a comparison to one or more opponents. - Dependent on both the performance of the athlete and the performance of others. - Include finishing a season with a certain number of wins, defeating a particular player, and winning a gold medal.

Set Performance, Process, and Outcome Goals

- Focus on outcome goals and lead to failure to set process and performance goals necessary to achieve the outcome. - Athletes and coaches need to set process goals that help meet performance goals, and performance goals that help meet outcome goals.

Process Goals

- Focus on the specific actions or behaviors an athlete must do well during a competition, game, or performance. - Should increase the likelihood of achieving performance and outcome goals. - Include keeping a firm but relaxed grip on a golf club, keeping knees bent when landing a dismount, or thinking "focused" to remind oneself to stay mentally engaged throughout a routine.

Sport-Confidence Model

- Focuses specifically on people's enduring beliefs about their competence within athletics, and the impact of these beliefs on performance. - Beliefs are influenced by athlete's own achievements, self-regulation, and the social climate. - Sport confidence is described as a combination of cognitive efficiency, physical skills/training, and resilience. - Athletes who are high on sport-confidence show better levels of performance, use more effective strategies for achieving desired goals, are able to block out distractions and maintain focus, and are able to bounce back from adverse experiences.

Set Challenging (but Realistic) Goals

- Goal difficulty: the relative challenge associated with achieving a particular goal, which can be easy, moderately difficult, or very difficult. - The most effective goals challenge an athlete to improve his or her performance. If goals are too easy, athletes to not push themselves. If goals are too difficult, athletes will get discouraged and may withdraw further effort. - Weinberg, Burton, Yukelson, & Weigand (1993) found that about 50% of goals set by NCAA Division 1 college students are moderately difficult.

Prolonging Performer Persistence

- Goals also help improve performance by motivating athletes to persist in their efforts until their goal is achieved (i.e., goal setting may increase confidence, which leads to persistence, even in the face of difficulty). - Continued persistence is achieved in part through dividing large goals into smaller ones. - The motivations that a person has for their goal pursuit also can influence persistence.

examples of self-efficacy

- Self-efficacy predicts athletic performance across a range of different types of tasks. People who are high on self-efficacy have higher expectations about their performance, and in turn perform better than those who are low in self-efficacy. -Self-efficacy may be a better predictor of performance than actual ability. Self-efficacy is a stronger predictor of future performance than past performance.

Inverted U Theory

- High arousal is associated with increased performance, but only up to a point. Performance is lowest when arousal is very low (boredom) or very high (anxiety), and highest when arousal is at a moderate level. - The Inverted U describes arousal as caused by situational factors, and does not distinguish between cognitive and somatic anxiety. - The ideal level of arousal for peak performance may also depend on the particular sport and the skills it requires. - An athlete's skill level may also impact the level of arousal necessary for peak performance (a younger or more inexperienced the athlete may benefit more from lower levels of arousal, whereas an athlete capable of performing at a very high level may benefit more from higher levels of arousal).

Adapt Goals to Individual Athletes

- It is important to adapt goals to individual athletes' motives, personality, and type of sport in order to improve goal effectiveness (Maitland & Gervis, 2010). - Athletes' level of competition influences the specific types of goals they set. Higher level athletes tend list their three most important goals as overall performance, winning, and fun/enjoyment. Lower level athletes tend to emphasize having fun, making friends, or staying fit over winning. - Findings in some studies point to goal setting being more beneficial for athletes at a higher skill level.

Extensions of Inverted U Theory

- Multidimensional anxiety theory - Somatic and cognitive anxiety influence performance in different ways. Peak performance occurs at a moderate level of physiological arousal. However, cognitive state anxiety is negatively associated with performance, meaning that peak performance occurs at low levels of worry. - Burton (1988) found that when examining collegiate swimmers, cognitive state anxiety was associated with lower levels of performance, whereas somatic state anxiety was associated with decreased performance at both high and low levels, but with increased performance at moderate levels. - This model assumes that somatic and cognitive anxiety have independent and separate effects on performance. - Catastrophe model - Proposes an interaction between the effects of somatic and cognitive anxiety on performance. - The inverted U model best describes the influence of physiological arousal on performance for people at levels of low cognitive anxiety. - When performance pressure is low, gradual increases in arousal will improve performance up to a point, and then interfere with performance. When performance pressure is higher, and an athlete experience moderate or high cognitive anxiety, greater physiological arousal even at a moderate level can lead to a "catastrophe", meaning a sudden and substantial drop in performance. - Relatively little empirical research has examined this overall model. -Some extensions of the model do show support. - Reversal theory - Proposes that arousal and anxiety may have different effects on performance for different people. - Arousal impacts performance differently depending on how a person thinks about or interprets that arousal. - Kerr & Males (2010) studied a team of elite lacrosse players who lost all four games at a world championship tournament. Lots of circumstances that could have been seen in a positive light were instead viewed in a negative light, which in turn may have contributed to overall poor performance.

Behavioral Measures (Measuring Arousal and Anxiety)

- Observe outward manifestations of anxiety or stress, such as fidgeting, heavy breathing, rapid heart rate, or nausea. - Can be used to avoid self-report problems (admitting feelings anxious). - Advantages: Fast; measures can be acquired through observation, without the use of questionnaires. - Disadvantages: Athletes may attempt to control their behavioral indicators, and therefore feel more anxiety than they are appearing to show. Also, different people show signs of anxiety in different ways, and the anxiety an athlete reports feeling may not match physiological indicators of such arousal.

The Impact of Goal Type

- Outcome goals can increase anxiety during an event. - Goals are inter-related; specific performance and process goals depend on outcome goals. - Athletes who are the most effective goal setters tend to set process goals. College athletes tend to emphasize outcome goals over performance goals. - It is easier to make adjustments to process and performance goals. - Athletes' individual goals may conflict with team goals.

Use Appropriate Reinforcement

- Reinforcement will vary based on athletes' interests, ability, personality, and age. - Frequent reinforcement is very helpful to young or new athletes. Coaches should also reward behavior that is close to the desired behavior. - Rewarding performance (effort) is better than rewarding outcome. - Coaches should reward both physical skills and social/emotional skills, such as showing good sportsmanship, being a "team player", and following team rules.

Focus on Neuroscience: How Brain Activity Can Differentiate Professional Versus Amateur Athletes

- Researchers asked amateur and professional golfers to imagine trying to hit a ball to a specific hole 100 yards away. Their brains were scanned with an fMRI while they were imaging this hit. The professional golfers showed brain activation in parts of the brain that involved planning and carrying out specific motor actions. The amateur golfers showed activation in parts of the brain that are involved in experiencing fear and anxiety.

Increasing Effort

- Setting goals also improves performance by helping athletes mobilize their efforts toward achieving these goals. - Setting realistic short-term goals allows athletes to experience success, and thereby increase their motivation to work more. - Goal setting can be especially useful at helping athletes mobilize their efforts when they are finding it difficult to get, and stay, motivated (ex: segmenting the goal into smaller, more manageable chunks).

Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) Theory

- The level of arousal (or anxiety) that leads to peak performance differs for different athletes-each athlete has an optimum level of arousal (or the "individualized zone") in which their best performance occurs. - Research with collegiate, Olympic, and professional athletes generally finds support for the IZOF model.

Trait Versus State Anxiety

- Trait anxiety describes a behavioral disposition, or personality dimension, in which people generally react anxiously, even in situations that should not be anxiety provoking. - State anxiety is caused by a given situation and is temporary. The five factors that lead to an increase in anxiety in anticipation of an achievement situation are fear of performance failure, fear of negative social evaluation, fear of physical harm, situation ambiguity, and disruption of well-learned routine.

Ego (or performance) goal orientation

- focused on outperforming others, tend to choose relatively easy tasks, prefer to compete against those they can beat. - Those who focus on mastery goals, rather not than performance goals, experience better outcomes, including higher levels for enjoyment in athletic events. The pursuit of mastery goals is also associated with greater effort and higher levels of intrinsic motivation, and lack of fear of performing poorly.

Social loafing (Influence of the Group on Motivation)

- individuals' tendency to reduce their own individual output when their contributions on a task will be combined with those of other people. - Social loafing is more likely to occur when individuals' own output isn't clear or measurable, the other members on a person's team are high in ability, and the person doesn't feel his or her output will make a meaningful difference.

Develop Goal Achievement Strategies

-Achievement strategies describe the specific strategies needed in order to accomplish one's goals. Can include giving up some activities in order to accomplish valued goals.

Examples of Social loafing

-Athletes swimming in a relay tend to swim faster than in an individual competition if they are in the later positions, whereas starting swimmers show no difference in times (Huffmeier & Hertel, 2011). - Huffmeier, Kanthak, & Hertel (2013) found that swimmers in the second, third, and fourth relay positions swam faster during the relay than they did in their individual event, but only during the freestyle relay. - Swimmers may engage in more self-comparison when all four are swimming the same stroke, which leads to less social loafing.

Set Both Short- and Long-Term Goals

-Both coaches and athletes tend to focus on long-term goals (Weinberg, Butt, Knight, & Perritt, 2001; Weinberg, 2010). -Short-term goals are necessary to provide the continued motivation needed to work towards the longer-term goals. -A meta-analysis of multiple studies on the impact of goal setting on sport performance found that athletes who set both short-term and long-term goals experience better success than those who only set short-term goals (Kyllo & Landers, 1995). -Successful athletes are able to keep a focus on long-term goals and make the sacrifices necessary to achieve those goals.

Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET)

-CET extends self-determination theory by focusing specifically on the causes of intrinsic motivation, and the factors that may increase and decrease such motivation. -The impact of external rewards varies depending on how these rewards are perceived.

Self-Report Measures (Measuring Arousal and Anxiety)

-Commonly used by sport psychologists, researchers, and coaches to measure athletes' level of arousal, anxiety, and stress. - The Sport Competition Anxiety Test: this scale is a reliable measure of trait anxiety, and can be used with both adult and child athletes. - The Sport Anxiety Scale-2 (SAS-2) and the Cognitive Somatic Anxiety Questionnaire (CSAQ) assess the level of trait anxiety. - The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 measures cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, and a related compound, self-confidence. - Advantages: Self-report tests are easy to complete (provide data from large samples of athletes), and the measures provide numerical, objective data (easy to score). Self-report measures also provide information that in some cases can only be learned by asking the athlete. - Disadvantages: Sometimes athletes deliberately don't answer the questions honestly. Measures require large samples of data in order to reliably predict how anxiety is correlated with performance. Also, some measures are relatively long, and can take considerable time to complete.

Create an Action Plan

-Decide what needs to happen in order for the goal to be met and then focus on making those things happen (ex: need to master a set of skills before moving on to the next level). -Goals should include a time element, keeping the challenge level at moderately difficult.

Competence Motivation Theory

-Describes the importance of feeling worthy and competent. If you experience successful results in a given domain, you increase in self-efficacy and positive feelings, and in turn increase in perceived competence. If, on the other hand, you experience negative results, you experience negative feelings, such as shame and anxiety, which in turn leads to decrease in competence motivation. -Athletes who receive positive feedback, from coaches and peers, increase in perceived competence, which in turn leads to higher levels of intrinsic motivation. -Athletes who receive more frequent praise and information report feeling higher in perceived competence, whereas those who receive more frequent corrective information following a mistake feel lower in perceived confidence. -Athletes at different levels of skills us different types of information to assess their competence.

Need Achievement Theory (Theories of Achievement Motivation)

-Describes the role of personal factors and situational factors in predicting achievement behavior. - People vary in their motivation to avoid failure and achieve success. - People take into consideration the specific achievement situation they are facing, including their probability of success and the incentive value of that success. -The interactions of these personal and situational factors influences athletes' resultant, or behavioral, tendencies as well as their emotional reactions.

Research done in Integrated Theory of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in Sport

-Research generally supports self-determination theory, and in particular the integrated theory of motivation in sport. -Athletes who are high on self-motivation show better performance later on. Experimental research reveals that self-motivation does lead to better performance. -A study by Radel, Sarrazin, & Pettelier (2009) shows a causal effect between being primed with autonomous words and performing a task more quickly and with more effort, and reporting greater interest, enjoyment, and satisfaction, than those primed with neutral or controlling words.

Research in Action: Why Owners Should Be Wary of Big Contracts

NBA and MLB players showed worse performance in the year after signing a new contract compared to the year in which the contract was signed or even than the prior year (White & Sheldon, 2014).

Social Facilitation Theory (Understanding the Arousal/Anxiety-Performance Link)

-Extends drive theory by specifically describing how the presence of other people can create arousal. People who engage in a task in front of others experience higher levels of arousal than those who are by themselves, and this arousal can have different effects on performance depending on how good a person is at a particular task. - If you are good at a task, arousal will lead you to perform even better. If you are not so good at a task, arousal may lead to worse performance. - Norman Triplett's observations and experiment (also mentioned in Chapter 1). - Explanations: Why does the presence of others facilitate performance on easy tasks? - If we are performing an easy task, distraction from other people doesn't have an impact on performance task (Baron, Moore, & Sanders, 1978; Huguet, Galvaing, Monteil, & Dumas, 1999). However, if we are performing a complex task, the distraction from other people may make it harder to concentrate, which in turn impairs performance. - OR, the mere presence of people may be energizing. Home teams do better than visiting teams (Jamieson, 2010); home teams in the NBA and MLS have a greater than 60% chance of winning (Moscowitz & Wertheim, 2011). - OR, knowing that you are being evaluated or judged by others may be the real cause for difference in performance. Worringham & Messick (1983) found that runners are faster when a person is specifically watching their performance than when a person is present but is facing away from them and hence can't evaluate their speed.

Set Specific (and Measureable) Goals

-Goal specificity - Precise and measurable goals are associated with better performance than more abstract and vague goals. - Goals that are hard to measure (ex: "relax", "try my hardest") are less motivating. - A meta-analysis by Mento, Steel, & Karren (1987) and Tubbs (1986) shows that specific goals are strongly linked to better task performance. -Objective goals - Refer to specific achievements a person wants to accomplish, and can easily be measured in terms of their success versus failure (ex: winning a national championship). - Subjective goals - Goals that describe general statements of intentions, but are not precisely measured in terms of whether they were

Understanding Goal Setting

-Goals describe something a person is consciously and deliberately trying to accomplish. -Within the field of athletics, goal setting is associated with better performance, and thus an important strategy for athletes to use to improve outcomes.

Research in Action: Why-and When-Do Homes Teams Choke?

-Goldman & Rao (2012) examined NBA statistics over six basketball seasons (2005 to 2010). The researchers examined both free throws and offensive rebounds. - Of the 300,000 free throws that were examined, home players had a slightly higher percentage of shots made than away players. However, when the games were close, home players showed a 2% drop in their overall free throw percentage, even lower than the average percentage of away players, whereas away players showed no change. Players who were overall worse at shooting free-throws showed an even greater drop in performance, meaning a stronger "home choke" effect. - Of the 1.3 million possessions in the last eight minutes of the game, if the game was basically settled, there was no difference in rates of rebounding for home versus away players, but for close games, home players had more rebounds (33%) and away players (29%). - The home crowd is generally quiet when their players shoot free throws, which could make players more self-conscious and thereby disrupt performance.

Impact on Youth: The Confidence-Flow Link

-Koehn, Morris, & Watt (2013) examined the link between confidence and flow in young athletes. They asked junior tennis players (ages 12 to 18) to complete measure of both confidence (before training or tournament events) and flow (within one hour after finishing a match during a tournament). Athletes who were higher on confidence were more likely to experience flow.

Physiological Measures (Measuring Arousal and Anxiety)

-Levels of anxiety can be measured through various measures of physiological arousal, including heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, muscle tension, and skin conductance. - Biochemical measures: The presence of norepinephrine, epinephrine, and cortisol can be detected in blood or urine tests. - Brain activation: Use of an EEG (electroencephalography), which measures brain waves, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, which provides information on blood flow to specific areas of the brain, can be used to measure anxiety. - Advantages: Avoids the problems of social desirability and misreporting, and it's almost impossible to deliberately produce false data. Also, data can be collected during athletic events, measuring actual responses. - Disadvantages: Some people find the use of EEG and fMRI themselves very stressful, and this can increase their anxiety levels even more. Also, physiological measures can be influenced by factors other than stress, including gender, weight, and overall physical health. High levels of arousal can indicate positive feelings. Lastly, the use of these measures is expensive and time consuming, and requires trained technicians.

Examples of Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET)

-People may see external rewards as a factor outside of themselves controlling their behavior, which leads to decreases in intrinsic motivation. -People may see rewards as informational, providing information about performance. -Athletes can perceive the function, or role, of a reward in different ways. Athletes see positive feedback as more informational and less controlling than negative feedback. Also, athletes who receive positive feedback show increased intrinsic motivation, whereas those who receive negative feedback show decreased intrinsic motivation as well as lower perceived competence. -A coach's behavior may have a stronger impact on motivation than the presence of an athletic scholarship.

Achievement Motivation

-People who exert considerable effort toward the pursuit of their goals are high in achievement motivation, meaning they are focused on mastering a task, achieving at a high level, and persisting even when confronted by obstacles. -People who are high in achievement are often described as being high in competitiveness. -Men tend to be higher in competiveness than women. Sex differences may be linked to social factors of biological factors (testosterone is linked with higher levels of competitiveness).

Cognitive Versus Somatic Anxiety

-State anxiety can be broken down into cognitive anxiety and somatic anxiety. -Cognitive anxiety describes anxiety the results from thoughts or concerns. -Somatic anxiety describes the perception of physiological responses to stressful situations, such as racing heartbeat, faster breathing, or feelings of nausea. - Cognitive anxiety (precompetitive cognitive anxiety) tends to be relatively high as a competitive event approaches, and typically stays high right up until the event begins. During the event, cognitive anxiety may fluctuate, depending on how the event is going. - Somatic anxiety (precompetitive somatic anxiety) tends to be relatively low, but then climbs rapidly, starting about 24 hours before the event starts.

Achievement Goal Theory

-States that different people are motivated by different types of goals.

Integrated Theory of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in Sport

-The model of the theory: -Social factors, such as experiences of success and failure, coaches' behavior, and whether a situation emphasizes cooperation or competition, influence athletes' beliefs about themselves. -Self-perceptions then influence feelings of competence, autonomy, and ability to relate to other people. -These feelings (psychological mediators) then influence the type of motivation athletes feel, which leads to particular consequences. -The model also describes a motivation continuum, with amotivation at one end, intrinsic motivation at the other, and different types of extrinsic motivation falling in between:

Choking

-The presence of supporting audiences can sometimes lead to worse performances, especially in high pressure situations where expectations are high. - NBA players are less accurate in free throws than their average when taking shots when their team is behind only by one point in the final minutes of the game (Worthy, Markman, & Maddux, 2009). - Soccer teams who lost their last shootout in an international tournament score fewer goals in the next game than teams who won their last shootout or didn't have a shootout (Jordet, Hartman, & Vuijk, 2011). - High pressure situations cause anxiety, which in turn seem to disrupt athletes' ability to execute necessary skills. - Professional tennis players who will be evaluated by tennis experts and compared to other athletes' performance are less accurate in their serves (Englert & Oudejans, 2014). - The presence of a supportive audience (and their presumably high expectations), is especially likely to lead to worse performance on difficult or unfamiliar tasks. - Butler & Baumeister (1998) found that students taking a math test in front of a friend, rather than a stranger, felt less stress, but actually made more errors and took longer to complete the test. - Home teams tend to have a higher winning percentage than away teams, BUT home teams play especially poorly under high pressure situations (Baumeister & Steinhilber, 1984; Schlenker et al., 1995a, 1995b). - Athletes who are high in fear of negative evaluation are even more likely to "choke" under pressure (Mesagno, Harvey, & Janelle, 2012)

Primary Versus Secondary Appraisal

-Transactional model: describes how people interpret or appraise a particular event is a more important predictor of the experience of a stressful event than the actual event (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). - Primary appraisal: people interpret the situation and what it will be for them ("Am I in danger?"). - Secondary appraisal: people assess the resources available for coping with the situation ("What can I do about this?"). - A more positive interpretation of the situation leads to better performance. - A study by Moore, Vine, Wilson, & Freeman (2015), showed that people who were told that arousal had positive effects on performance did much better on a putting task than those who were not given this information

Record - and Monitor- Goals

-Writing down goals in very effective (Weinberg, 2010). Monitoring progress towards goals promotes goal attainment, and also allows for goal revision if necessary (Harkin et al., 2015). -Making goals public leads to greater performance improvements than keeping goals private (Kyllo & Landers, 1995). -Recording goals can help reduce undesirable behaviors.

Approach Versus Avoidance Motivation

An athlete could pursue performance goals with either a focus on approaching a desirable goal, such as being faster than one's teammate, or avoiding an undesirable goal, such as not being outscored by an opponent. - An athlete could pursue mastery goals with an approach focus, such as improving one's skill at a particular task, or with an avoidance focus, such as not failing to show improvement at a particular task. - Athletes' focus on approach versus avoidance goals impacts intrinsic motivations performance. Focusing on approaching mastering skills predicts greater enjoyment and performance, whereas focusing on avoiding poor play actually leads to worse performance.

Strategies for Increasing Intrinsic Motivation

Create Motivating Environments Create different types of environments for different people (older adults, pregnant women, intramural leagues). - Intrinsic motivation increases when people are able to experience some type of success (ex: t-ball, lowered basketball hoops, smaller soccer balls). - Set realistic performance goals. - Intrinsic motivation increases when people have some choice over their environment (ex: let athletes choose what skills they will practice, create team goals or rules, develop game strategy).

Research in Action: The Power of Internal Motivation

Ntoumanis, Healy, Sedikides, Duda, Stewart, Smith, & Bond (2013) measured whether people were pursuing goals for internal reasons such as the enjoyment of challenge the goal provides, or external reasons, such as being expected to do so. They found that athletes who were pursuing the goal for internal reasons persisted longer than those who were pursuing for external reasons.

The fight-or-flight response (Physiology of Arousal)

People are normally in a state of equilibrium called homeostasis. When a person is threatened, energy is shifted from the nonessential body systems to those systems necessary to respond to the challenge, either by fleeing or fighting. - The hypothalamus activates both the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine systems. The adrenal glands release epinephrine and norepinephrine. This increases heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate. The pupils widen, and blood flows toward the muscles. - The pituitary glad releases adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which causes the adrenal glands to produce glucocorticoids, or steroid hormones, such as cortisol. This helps protect the body from injuries.

Impact on Youth: Why Coach-Set Goals Do Work for Some Athletes

Researchers created two distinct types of goal-setting procedures for 12- and 13-year-old elite female gymnasts. Half of the gymnasts were asked to list three of their own goals regarding their training, and the other half were assigned goals by their coaches. Different goal setting procedures were most effective for different athletes. Gymnasts with an internal locus of control found setting their own goals most effective, whereas for those with an external locus of control, coach-set goals were most effective.

Principles of Effective Goal Setting

Set Appropriate Goals - Not all goals are equally effective for improving results. - SMART Goals: specific, measurable, action oriented, realistic, and tim

Focus on Neuroscience: The Impact of Testosterone on Motivation

Testosterone increases power motivation. Elite male athletes with high levels of testosterone choose harder voluntary workouts, experience greater increases in strength and body mass, and are more likely to win games. Female net ball players with high levels of testosterone both selected more vigorous training sessions than those who are low on testosterone and performed at a higher level during these sessions.

Psychological Arousal

There are both positive (exhilaration or excitement) and negative (anxiety) feelings of arousal.

Arousal

a blend of physiological and psychological activity, or the level of alertness in a given situation. -Very low and very high levels of arousal can be detrimental to performance.

Anxiety

a feeling of nervousness and worry.

Stress

an imbalance between the demands of the situation a person is in and their beliefs about their ability to cope with that situation. - Stress reactions result when stressors occur, and we respond both physiologically and psychologically, based on our interpretation of the event. - Stress reactions can be influenced both by aspects of the situation and aspects of the person. - Moderate levels of stress can increase arousal and provide energy, and can help performance.

Focus on Neuroscience: How Effort Looks in the Brain

deMorree, Klein, & Macora (2012) examined the effects of effort on neurological functioning. Thy asked healthy male participants to perform a series of bicep curls using a light weight and a heavier weight, and lifted the weight in both a non-fatigued and pre-fatigued state. Brian activity was greater when lifting the heavier weight, brain activity was positively correlated with the perceived effort men reported exerting, and the brain worked harder to lift the weight when the arm was tired than when the arm was fresh, indicating that the brain is understanding and processing what th

Introjected regulation

describes an athlete who is partially intrinsically motivated, but is also motivated by controlling external factors.

External regulation

describes behavior that is entirely motivated by a fear of punishment or a desire for a reward.

Hazards of External Rewards

example like overjustification -Fortier, Vallerand, Briere, & Provencher (1995) found that recreational college athletes are higher in intrinsic motivation than competitive athletes. -Medic, Mack, Wilson, & Starkes (2007) found that college athletes who are on an athletic scholarship report that their intrinsic motivation to perform well would decrease if the scholarship were taken away, and athletes not on athletic scholarships report their intrinsic motivation would decrease if such a reward were given. -Sturman & Thibodeau (2001) found that MLB players who received a new contract (and a big raise) showed a decrease in immediate post-contract performance. -Cameron & Pierce (1994) showed in a meta-analysis of 96 studies examining the effects of reinforcement/reward on intrinsic motivation that overall, external rewards do not decrease intrinsic motivation. Verbal praise actually leads to an increase in intrinsic motivation. -McFall, Knoeber, & Thurman (2009) studied the playing of top ranked professional golfers, and found that having a financial incentive to perform well seems to lead to improved performance for players who are close to attaining a very lucrative prize.

Overjustification

extrinsic rewards undermine intrinsic interest.

Task (or mastery) goal orientation

focused on improving skills and ability over time, focus is on themselves, tend to choose challenging tasks, prefer competing against high quality opponents.

Integrated regulation

involves internalizing the external pressures on behavior and seeing behavior as freely determined. This motivation is essentially as effective as intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic motivation

motivation that comes from an external source, such as awards, trophies, money, praise, or social status.

Intrinsic motivation

motivation that comes from an internal source, such as the fun of competing, a desire to learn new skills, and the excitement of performing well.

Goal setting theory

suggests that athletes who form goals are energized to show increased effort, which in turn increases their effectiveness at accomplishing their goals.

Motivation

the direction and intensity of one's effort.