Early history In its formation, sport psychology was primarily the domain of
physical educators, not researchers, which can explain the lack of a consistent history. Nonetheless, many instructors sought to explain the various phenomena associated with
physical activity and developed sport psychology
laboratories. The history of
sport psychology dates back almost 200 years. In 1830, Carl Friedrich Koch published
Calisthenics from the Viewpoint of Dietetics and Psychology. Later, in 1879, Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory, where some of the earliest sport psychology experiments were conducted. In 1884, Konrad Rieger researched muscular endurance and hypnosis, while in 1891, Angelo Mosso studied mental fatigue and physical performance. The term "sport psychology" was first used in 1900 by Pierre de Coubertin, who, along with Wundt, made significant contributions in the early 20th century. In
Europe, the field developed largely in
Germany. In the early
1920s, Dr. Carl Diem founded the first sport psychology laboratory in
Berlin. Around the same time, Robert Werner Schulte established the (College of Physical Education) in 1920, where physical abilities and sport aptitude were studied. In 1921, Schulte also published
Body and Mind in Sport. In
Russia, sport psychology experiments began as early as 1925 at institutes of physical culture in
Moscow and
Leningrad, and formal sport psychology departments were formed around 1930. However, it was a bit later during the
Cold War period (1946–1989) that numerous sport science programs were formed, due to the military competitiveness between the
Soviet Union and the
United States, and as a result of attempts to increase the
Olympic medal numbers. The Americans felt that their sport performances were inadequate and very disappointing compared to the ones of the
Soviets, so this led them to invest more in the methods that could ameliorate their athletes performance, and made them have a greater interest on the subject. The advancement of sport psychology was more deliberate in the
Soviet Union and the Eastern countries, due to the creation of sports institutes where sport psychologists played an important role. 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. Despite Scripture's previous experiments, the first recognized sport psychology study was carried out by an American psychologist
Norman Triplett, in 1898. The work of
Norman Triplett demonstrated that 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. He wrote about his findings in what was regarded as the first scientific paper on sport psychology, titled "The Dynamogenic Factors in Pacemaking and Competition", which was published in 1898, in the
American Journal of Psychology. Lashley and Watson, pertaining to the learning curve present in archery, provided a template for future habit forming research, as their work proved that humans have a higher level of motivation to achieve a task such as archery in comparison to a mundane task. Researchers Albert Johanson and Joseph Holmes tested
baseball player
Babe Ruth in 1921, as reported by sportswriter Hugh S. Fullerton. Ruth's swing speed, his breathing right before hitting a baseball, his coordination and rapidity of wrist movement, and his reaction time were all measured, with the researchers concluding that Ruth's talent could be attributed in part to motor skills and reflexes that were well above those of the average person. The field of sport psychology in general began in the 1960s with the formation of the
International Society of Sport Psychology in 1965, The North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity in 1967, and The Canadian Society for Psychomotor Learning and Sport Psychology in 1969. Sport psychology started in 1890 when Norman Triplett performed the first experiment in sport psychology and the social facilitation phenomenon. Then 1925 Coleman Griffith created the Athletic Research Laboratory at the
University of Illinois. Later in 1930 the
Soviet Union employed sport psychology during the
Cold War. In 1960 sport psychology becomes part of the US and expanded to the whole world. In 1986 the American Psychological Association recognized Sport psychology as a branch of Psychology. In 1992, the Psychology Board of
Australia recognized "Sport Psychologist" as a protected title, and in 1993 British Psychology Society formed a sport and exercise psychology section. Studies such as Johanson and Holme's test on Ruth were foundational in the establishment of the importance of sport psychology as a field, both in the eye of the public and the scientific community.
Characteristics of behavioral sport psychology The first characteristic of behavioral sport psychology involves identifying target behaviors of athletes and coaches to be improved, defining those behaviors in a way so that they can be reliably measured, and using changes in the behavioral measure as the best indicator of the extent to which the recipient of an intervention is being helped (Martin, 2011). A second characteristic is that behavioral psychology treatment procedures and techniques are based on the principles and procedures of Pavlovian (or respondent) and operant conditioning and are ways of rearranging the stimuli that occur as antecedents and consequences of an athlete's behavior. The fourth characteristic is that researchers have relied heavily on the use of single-subject research designs to evaluate interventions in sport settings, including the following: (a) a focus on individual athletic performance across several practices and competitions; (b) acceptability by athletes and coaches because no control group is needed, few participants are needed, and sooner or later all participants receive the intervention; (c) easy adaptability to assess a variety of interventions in practices and competitions; and (d) effectiveness assessed through direct measures of sport-specific behaviors or outcomes of behaviors. The fifth characteristic of a behavioral approach is to place a high value on accountability for everyone involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of an intervention (Martin & Pear, 2011).
Social validation in sport psychology In ABA, the term social validation refers to procedures to ensure that the techniques employed by a practitioner are selected and applied in the best interests of the clients. In behavioral sport psychology, social validation requires that the practitioner constantly seek answers to three questions: (a) What do the athletes (and perhaps the coach and parents) think about the goals of the intervention? (b) What do they think about the procedures recommended by the practitioner? (c) What do they think about the results produced by those procedures? Behavior sport psychologists need to be aware of and behave consistently with the set of ethical principles to guide the actions of sport psychologists published in 1995 by the Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology, which, in 2006, became the
Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP). These principles of ethics exist with the primary goal of the welfare and protection of individuals, groups, and the public with which the AASP members work. The AASP members make a lifelong commitment to act ethically themselves, encourage ethical behavior in others, and consult with others as needed on ethical concerns.
Skill acquisition Each sport requires different range of skills. Knapp (1963) defined skills as the learned ability to bring pre-determined results with maximum certainty, often with the minimum outlay of time, energy or both. As we develop a skill, the error is diminished. An ability describes our innate physical attributes that determine our potential for a given sport. Skill acquisition engages experts of their fields (
neuroscience,
physiology,
biomechanics, etc.) to conduct research on how the neuromuscular system functions to activate and coordinate the muscles in the performance of a motor skill. Skill acquisition has evolved from a subfield of
psychology to taking on its own interpretation of the brain-behavior theories.
Coleman Griffith: "America's first sport psychologist" Coleman Griffith worked as an American professor of educational psychology at the
University of Illinois where he first performed comprehensive research and applied sport psychology. He performed causal studies on vision and attention of basketball and soccer players, and was interested in their reaction times, muscular tension and relaxation, and mental awareness. Griffith began his work in 1925 studying the psychology of sport at the University of Illinois funded by the Research in Athletics Laboratory. Until the laboratory's closing in 1932, he conducted research and practiced sport psychology in the field. The laboratory was used for the study of sport psychology; where different factors that influence athletic performance and the physiological and psychological requirements of sport competitions were investigated. He then transmitted his findings to coaches, and helped advance the knowledge of psychology and physiology on sports performance. Griffith also published two major works during this time: The Psychology of Coaching (1926) and The Psychology of Athletics (1928). Coleman Griffith was also the first person to describe the job of sport psychologists and talk about the main tasks that they should be capable of carrying out. He mentioned this in his work "Psychology and its relation to athletic competition", which was published in 1925. One of the tasks was to teach the younger and unskilled coaches the psychological principles that were used by the more successful and experienced coaches. The other task was to adapt psychological knowledge to sport, and the last task was to use the scientific method and the laboratory for the purpose of discovering new facts and principles that can aid other professionals in the domain. In 1938, Griffith returned to the sporting world to serve as a sport psychologist consultant for the
Chicago Cubs. Hired by
Philip Wrigley for $1,500, Griffith examined a range of factors such as: ability, personality, leadership, skill learning, and social psychological factors related to performance. Griffith also made several recommendations to Mr. Wrigley, including a "psychology clinic" for managers, coaches, and senior players. Wrigley offered a full-time position as a sport psychologist to Griffith but he declined the offer to focus on his son's high school education. Coleman Griffith made numerous contributions to the field of sport psychology, but most notable was his belief that field studies (such as athlete and coach interviews) could provide a more thorough understanding of how psychological principles play out in competitive situations. Griffith devoted himself to rigorous research, and also published for both applied and academic audiences, noting that the applicability of sport psychology research was equally important with the generation of knowledge. Finally, Griffith recognized that sport psychology promoted performance enhancement and personal growth. In 1923, Griffith developed and taught the first sport psychology university courses ("Psychology and Athletics") at the University of Illinois, and he came to be known as "The Father of Sport Psychology" in the United States, as a result of his pioneering achievements in that area. However, 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 In 1938, he began to study how different factors in sport psychology can affect athlete's motor skills. He also investigated how high altitudes can have an effect on exercise and performance, aeroembolism, and decompression sickness, and studies on kinesthetic perception, learning of motor skills, and neuromuscular reaction were carried out in his laboratory. In 1964, he wrote a paper "Physical Education: An Academic Discipline", that helped further advance sport psychology, and began to give it its scholarly and scientific shape. Additionally, he published over 120 articles, was a board member of various journals, and received many awards and acclaims for his contributions. In 1979, Rainer Martens published an article entitled
"About Smocks and Jocks", in which he contended that it was difficult to apply specific laboratory research to sporting situations. For instance, how can the pressure of shooting a foul shot in front of 12,000 screaming fans be duplicated in the lab? Martens contended: "I have grave doubts that isolated psychological studies which manipulate a few variables, attempting to uncover the effects of X on Y, can be cumulative to form a coherent picture of human behavior. I sense that the elegant control achieved in laboratory research is such that all meaning is drained from the experimental situation. The external validity of laboratory studies is at best limited to predicting behavior in other laboratories." Martens urged researchers to get out of the laboratory and onto the field to meet athletes and coaches on their own turf. Martens' article spurred an increased interest in qualitative research methods in sport psychology, such as the seminal article "Mental Links to Excellence."
The first sport psychology organizations Given the relatively free travel of information amongst European practitioners, sport psychology flourished first in Europe, where in 1965, a meeting was organized by Ferruccio Antonelli, a sport psychologist living in
Italy. The meeting was held in
Rome, Italy and some 450 professionals primarily from
Europe,
Australia, and the Americas attended. It became known as the First World Congress of Sport Psychology and gave rise to the
International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP). The ISSP became a prominent sport psychology organization after the Third World Congress of Sport Psychology in 1973, and still exists today as the only international organization that is focused solely on the promotion of sport psychology. Additionally, the
European Federation of Sport Psychology, or FEPSAC (Fédération Européenne de Psychologie des Sports et des Activités Corporelles) was formed following a similar meeting known as the first European Congress of sport in 1969, and has since held 15 congresses to discuss the future of sport psychology in Europe. In North America, support for sport psychology grew out of physical education, and In 1973, 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 behavior and sport psychology. These two organizations would go on to be the leading sources of collaboration among scientists in sport psychology, and in 1985, the NASPSPA became the first organization in North America to sponsor a journal in sport psychology, when the previously unaffiliated
The Journal of Sport Psychology, which was founded in 1979, became
The Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. Also during this same time period, over 500 members of the American Psychological Association (APA) signed a petition to create Division 47 in 1986, which is focused on the collaboration between researchers in the field of Exercise and Sport Psychology. 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). This was done in response to NASPSPA voting not to address applied issues and to keep their focus on research. Following its stated goal of promoting the science and practice of applied sport psychology, AAASP quickly worked to develop uniform standards of practice, highlighted by the development of an ethical code for its members in the 1990s. The development of the AAASP Certified Consultant (CC-AAASP) program helped bring standardization to the training required to practice applied sport psychology, and in 2007, AAASP dropped "Advancement" from its name to become the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP), as it is currently known.
Coleman Griffith: "America's first sport psychologist" Coleman Griffith worked as an American professor of educational psychology at the
University of Illinois, where he first performed comprehensive research and applied sport psychology. He performed causal studies on vision and attention of
basketball and
soccer players, and was interested in their reaction times, muscular tension and relaxation, and mental awareness. Until the laboratory's closing in 1932, he conducted research and practiced sport psychology in the field. The laboratory was used for the study of sport psychology, where factors influencing athletic performance and the physiological and psychological requirements of sport competitions were investigated. He then transmitted his findings to coaches and helped advance the knowledge of psychology and physiology on sports performance. Griffith also published two major works during this time:
The Psychology of Coaching (1926) and
The Psychology of Athletics (1928). Coleman Griffith was also the first person to describe the job of sport psychologists and outline the main tasks they should be capable of carrying out. He mentioned this in his work
Psychology and its relation to athletic competition (1925). One task was to teach younger and less experienced coaches the psychological principles used by more successful coaches. Another was to adapt psychological knowledge to sport, and the last was to use the scientific method and laboratory research for discovering new facts and principles that could aid professionals in the field. In 1938, Griffith returned to the sporting world to serve as a sport psychology consultant for the
Chicago Cubs. Hired by
Philip Wrigley for $1,500, Griffith examined a range of factors such as ability, personality, leadership, skill learning, and social psychological factors related to performance. He also recommended to Wrigley the creation of a "psychology clinic" for managers, coaches, and senior players. Although offered a full-time position, Griffith declined to focus on his son's education. Griffith's contributions were notable for emphasizing that field studies, such as athlete and coach interviews, could provide deeper insights into how psychological principles affect competitive situations. He published for both academic and applied audiences, stressing that the applicability of sport psychology research was equally important as generating knowledge. He also promoted performance enhancement alongside personal growth. In 1923, Griffith developed and taught the first sport psychology university courses (
Psychology and Athletics) at the University of Illinois. Due to his pioneering work, he became known as "The Father of Sport Psychology" in the United States. However, he was also called "The prophet without disciples", since none of his students continued in sport psychology, and his work only began receiving attention again in the 1960s. has been developed and validated with objective data (player's statistics), and found to be a reliable tool for assessing athletic performance in team sports. Much of the research done on athletic performance has been through meta-analysis reviews. These meta-analysis reviews have shown that there is a benefit to using sport psychology techniques to improve an athletes performance. Some influences that have been found to be largely beneficial include task-cohesion and self-efficacy. Being mentally prepared has proven to help athlete's performance, however research has shown that elite athletes and coaches will be hesitant to seek out help from a sport psychologist even if they believed it could help. There are multiple key recommendations for mental practice which improve sport performance, such as practicing imagery and increasing mental and physical repetitions.
Youth sport Youth sport refers to organized sports programs for children less than 18 years old. Researchers in this area focus on the benefits or drawbacks of youth sport participation and how parents impact their children's experiences of sporting activities. There are multiple factors as to why youth sport is studied when researching sport psychology, such as life skills, burnout, parenting behavior and coach's behavior. These factors influence whether athlete's in youth sport are affected mentally, whether that be a positive or a negative.
Life skills refer to the mental, emotional, behavioral, and social skills and resources developed through sport participation. Research in this area focuses on how life skills are developed and transferred from sports to other areas in life (e.g., from tennis to school) and on program development and implementation.
Burnout in sport is typically characterized as having three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and a reduced sense of accomplishment. Athletes who experience burnout may have different contributing factors, but the more frequent reasons include perfectionism, boredom, injuries, excessive pressure, and overtraining. Burnout is studied in many different athletic populations (e.g., coaches), but it is a major problem in youth sports and contributes to withdrawal from sport.
Parenting in youth sport is necessary and critical for young athletes. Research on parenting explores behaviors that contribute to or hinder children's participation. For example, research suggests children want their parents to provide support and become involved, but not give technical advice unless they are well-versed in the sport. Excessive demands from parents may also contribute to burnout.
Coach behavior is a major contributor to how youth athletes experience sports.
Coaching While sport psychologists primarily work with athletes and focus their research on improving athletic performance, coaches are another population where intervention can take place. Researchers in this area focus on the things coaches can say or do to improve their coaching technique and their athletes' performance.
Motivational climate refers to the situational and environmental factors that influence individuals' goals. The two major types of motivational climates coaches can create are task-oriented and ego-oriented. While winning is the overall goal of sports competitions regardless of the motivational climate, a task-orientation emphasizes building skill, improvement, giving complete effort, and mastering the task at hand (i.e., self-referenced goals), while an ego-orientation emphasizes demonstrating superior ability, competition, and does not promote effort or individual improvement (i.e., other-referenced goals). A task-oriented climate has been found to develop a greater intrinsic, self-determined motivation in athletes compared to an ego-oriented climate. Additionally, an environment with self-improvement as the primary focus creates greater intrinsic motivation than one with winning as the focus.
Effective coaching practices explore the best ways coaches can lead and teach their athletes. For examples, researchers may study the most effective methods for giving feedback, rewarding and reinforcing behavior, communicating, and avoiding self-fulfilling prophecies in their athletes. Coaches influence motivation of athletes mainly through interactional behavior with athletes. Coaches can be perceived by their athletes as autonomy-supporting or controlling. The philosophy should facilitate self-awareness, prioritize coaching objectives, and be athlete-centered. Having a philosophy central to the individual will allow a coach to react more efficiently to fast-paced decisions during sports in a systematic and thoughtful way. A coach must be self-aware of their own values in order to monitor if these values align with their thoughts and actions. Often, getting feedback from trusted outside sources is helpful in developing this self-awareness. A coach must also determine and prioritize coaching objectives between winning, athlete well-being, and time outside of the sport. An athlete-centered philosophy emphasizes learning and improvement over winning, which puts the athlete development first. This philosophy should be dynamic as both societal and coaching experiences occur and change.
Team processes Sport psychologists may do consulting work or conduct research with entire teams. This research focuses on team tendencies, issues, and beliefs at the group level, not at the individual level.
Team cohesion can be defined as a group's tendency to stick together while pursuing its objectives. Team cohesion has two components: social cohesion (how well teammates like one another) and task cohesion (how well teammates work together to achieve their goal).
Collective efficacy is a team's shared belief that they can or cannot accomplish a given task. In other words, this is the team's belief about the level of competency they have to perform a task. Collective efficacy is an overall shared belief amongst team members and not merely the sum of individual self-efficacy beliefs.
Leadership can be thought of as a behavioral process that influences team members towards achieving a common goal. Leadership in sports is pertinent because there are always leaders on a team (i.e., team captains, coaches, trainers). Research on leadership studies characteristics of effective leaders and leadership development.
Organizational sport psychology Since the early 2000s, there has been a growing trend toward research and practice that better acknowledges the importance of creating sporting environments which enable people to thrive. Organizational sport psychology is a subfield of sport psychology that is dedicated to better understanding individual behavior and social processes in sport organizations to promote organizational functioning. The focus of organizational sport psychology is to develop knowledge that supports the development of optimally functioning sport organizations though the enhancement of day-to-day experiences for those that operate within their sphere of influence. This knowledge can be used in a variety of ways through interventions at the individual, group, or organizational level, and thus organizational sport psychology reflects a systems perspective for academic study and an increasingly necessary aspect of practitioner competency.
Motivation in sport Motivation in field of psychology is loosely defined as the intensity and direction in which effort is applied. The direction of motivation refers to how one seeks out situations or if they avoid things that might be challenging. Intensity refers to how much effort one puts into any challenge or situation. Motivation is tied closely to personality and can be categorized as a personality trait. There are three general theories of motivation: participant/trait theory, situational theory, and interactional theory. These theories are similar to those of personality
. Participant/trait theory says motivation consists of the personality traits, desires, and goals of an athlete. For example, some athletes might be extremely competitive and have the desire to improve and win constantly. These athletes would be motivated by competition with themselves and others
The Interactional theory combines the ideas of participant/trait and situational, where the level of motivation of an individual depends on his/her traits and the situation at hand. For example, if an athlete is intrinsically competitive, they may feel most motivated when participating in a match against many other people. four sets of two. A motivational state from each of the four pairs is present at any time.
Reversal theory has supporting research connecting psychological and physiological phenomena to these states. Purposeful reversals from a less desired, or useful, state can increase performance and endurance. Arousal and stress may be utilized in a unique and helpful way with the use of this theoretical framework. The theory has been well supported in studies on several continents and in a variety of sports.
Image Visualization has recently gained attention as a popular approach to improving sport performance, the concept was first introduced in the 1970s by Galway. Galway says the most powerful opponent a player faces is their own mind. Visualization is intense imagination in the mind without any action. Athletes often create images in their mind about their competition. They imagine themselves playing well or poorly, rehearsing technical skills, analyzing mistakes, or anticipating the competition. Recent meta-analytic evidence indicates that imagery interventions produce overall medium improvements in sport outcomes (performance, motivational, and affective), and combining imagery with physical practice outperforms physical practice alone.
Recovery from injury Sport psychologists may also deal with helping athletes recover from the psychological consequences resulting from injury. Because athletes, especially professionals, are more at risk to injury than other kinds of exercisers, the process of recovering from injury, and the varying effects of different kinds of injuries are an important component of sport psychology research. Additionally, sport psychologist are interested in the differences between athletes that may elicit a stronger psychological reaction to an injury, and who is most at risk for injury. For example, research has found men may be less likely to report concussions than women and could be at higher risk of injury due to their physiology. Regarding psychological outcomes, researchers are interested if the type of sport a person plays, how closely they identify with being an athlete, or the amount of time they have spent playing a sport can influence their mental health, and research also explores what types of mental health outcomes are associated with injury (fear, depression, stress, etc.). As of 2013, sport psychologists have also began to explore the effectiveness of various techniques such as setting goals during rehabilitation,
self-talk, or
biofeedback techniques. Injury among athletes has also been proven to negatively impact their mental health. Especially with elite athletes whose job is to play a certain sport, there is a proven negative mental impact to having an injury and not being able to play the sport. There has been limited research in the past on how athletes deal with the burden of getting injured and not being able to play their sport, however the recent research which has been done has shown that injury has caused athletes to have worsening mental health such as depression and anxiety.
Burnout Research on athlete burnout has historically been focused on the physical load from training and competitions, in addition to the psychological stress associated with situational pressure to justify the occurrence of the burnout. Traditionally, burnout in athletes is explained by a strenuous work load that is needed to become competitive in sports, with the flip side of this strenuous work being the danger of failing to adapt to training loads, being injured, or ill and therefore experiencing performance issues. Research also claims that occurrence of burnout among athletes are rising, and an athlete's mental health is challenged when experiencing performance issues, injuries, or are ill. These result in potential situational stressors that result in stress related responses such as negative thoughts and emotions. Athlete burnout is explained as a result from an athlete's experienced or believed inability to meet demands in training and competitions, in which the distress is related to the discrepancy between the athlete's expectations to achieve goals and cope with demands. The concept of athlete burnout is made up of three parts: physical and emotional exhaustion, reduced performance accomplishment, and sport devaluation. The core element, physical and emotional exhaustion, is characterized by fatigue from training and competitions. Reduced performance accomplishment is defined as focusing on the feeling of being unable to reach goals and succeed with training and competitions. Sport devaluation, the third aspect, is characterized by loss of interest and care for sports, which further results in reduced quality of performance. Coaches and athletes are also very dependent on not only results, but each other. If athletes believe that they are not being pushed, or the opposite, being pushed too hard, burnout is very possible and the drive to continue playing lowers. Also, because athletes are always striving to get to that next level in a sport, once an athlete reaches that level, it is shown that these athletes are more prone to becoming complacent and not feel the need to work as hard, or burning out. This can also happen to coaches at any level. The repetitions which coaches face and similarly to athletes, once they get to the highest level and win at the highest level, they are more prone to burning out because there is nothing in the sport which they have not achieved.
Identity beyond sports Identity is built off of one's self-perception of their physical, psychological, and interpersonal characteristics which are rooted in personal experiences, memories, and social influences. Athletic identity is defined as "the degree to which an individual identifies with the athlete role and looks to others for acknowledgement of that role." Athletic identity is developed through acquisition of skills, confidence, and social interaction during sport. Cognitively, it provides a framework for processing information, how an individual copes with career-threatening situations, and inspires behavior consistent with an athlete. The social role can be determined by the perceptions close to the athlete, like family, friends, and teammates. As a form of self-concept, athletic identity provides a way to evaluate competence or worth, which can influence self-esteem and motivation. After spending a majority of their lives training, earning recognition for athletic accomplishments, and integrating in the sports environment, the athletic identity becomes a key component of an individual's identity as a whole. Having a strong athletic identity can have a very positive impact on athletes during their athletic career as this allows them to focus solely on their career and bettering themselves. When athletes who have a very strong athletic identity get injured and are sidelined away from the game, it can lead to anxiety, stress and depression because these athletes do not know who they are outside of the game they have been playing. This is the same with athletes who have retired and not known what to do because there whole lives have been about sports. Inversely, athletes can be optimistic about their future post-sports because they will have time to do activities which they never have been able to do before.
Self-esteem Self-esteem is the confidence someone has in themselves and their abilities. This is why sport and physical activity as a whole has been proven to provide positive mental health benefits, such as more confidence and higher self-esteem. When athletes succeed in sport, they are more confident in their abilities and their self-worth as a result. Sport can also work inversely with self-esteem and cause athletes to feel worse about themselves. If someone is playing poorly then it is possible the athlete will end up thinking less of themselves and having lower self-worth. Playing sports in general, and doing some form of physical activity already immediately makes people think of themselves as more than which is shown by research.
Stress Stress is the process by which people perceive and respond to certain events, called stressors, that they find difficult or threatening. Stress is perceived as an interaction between a person and their environment. Stress can be observed in athletes under the influence of external and internal factors of the sport environment. Some identified stressors included excessive amounts of pressure, spectators, training, competition environment, injuries, physical errors, abilities, self-doubt, watching the opponent, etc. These are just a few of the many stressors an athlete can face in their environment. Research in this context is increasing and multiple studies have shown the importance of sport psychology in improving the performance of coaches and athletes.
Role of psychology in student-athletes Pursuing a dual career in sport and school, aka student-athletes are more at risk for overall well-being. With decreased mental health and increased stress levels due to needing to cope with multiple demands. When
student-athletes experience higher weekly sport-to-school conflict than usual, they have higher sport-related stress than usual. Student-athletes that experienced higher levels of stress also reported greater sport anxiety while in game of their respective sports. These students must handle the stressors associated with being a student while juggling their sport practices and game experiences. Studies have also found that organized sports can provide opportunities to promote mental health awareness in young athletes and reduce the stigma for mental illness. A study conducted by Kegelaers et al. in 2022 examined the mental health of student-athletes. The study included a comprehensive review of 159 studies spanning three decades, mostly conducted in North America. The majority of student-athletes in these studies (62.5%) reported ill-health outcomes (e.g. disordered eating, anxiety, depression) with 22.6% of student-athletes reporting positive health outcomes (e.g. subjective well-being, psychological well-being). Most variables contributing to mental health issues were related to generic or sport-specific factors, with a limited number of studies examining dual-career specific factors (such as enrolling in collegiate sports and academics at the same time).
Professional sports In professional sports, the role of a sport psychologist is subject to change. Roles can change based on the employment of staff within the organization from management to coaching staff. Examples of services performed include: performance enhancement services, clinical or counseling services, psychological testing, and
mindfulness training. Through performance enhancement services, psychologists help professional athletes with self-regulation to enhancing team cohesion. Sport psychologists in professional sports organizations also must be well trained in clinical or counseling psychology to help professional athletes deal with personal issues that occur off the field. Sport psychologists must also be trained in psychological testing which is generally used in pre-drafting situations as professional sports teams want to identify psychological factors that could negatively influence a draft candidate's potential. Mindfulness techniques are also a useful tool for sport psychologists to utilize as mindfulness training has been linked with better performance in professional competition. ==Commonly used techniques==