Sports Activity

Sports activity has been characteristic of people throughout history. The area of human endeavor called sports involves great numbers of people, both participants and spectators, in almost all the nations and civilizations of the world. Sport psychology is an area which attempts to apply psychological facts and principles to learning, performance, and associated human behavior in the whole field of sports (Lawther, 1972, p. 1).

The motivations and emotional reactions of people involved in sports, both as participants and as spectators, form a part of the study of sports psychology. The psychosocial or group behavior of people concerned with sports performances and competitions form another unit of interest in sports psychology. The basic psychological aspects of the early stages of sports-skill learning, and the later, somewhat different aspects of high-level skill learning and performance form a part of this subject, too.

The whole area of sport-teaching methods is an attempt to apply educational psychology to the learning of sport skills. Length and distribution of practice and of rest periods, retention of acquired levels, size of units most appropriate for teaching at each stage, part versus whole emphasis, precision and promptness of performance results, and even the degree of value of knowledge of mechanical principles are included as a part of the application of educational psychology to sports. The generalization of a skill so that it will fit the varying co

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ion strategy works for the elite male athlete, then the same strategy should be applied to the elite female athlete in the same way, with the results assumed to be similar. However, instead of making these assumptions, sports psychology researchers should include gender as a variable when developing a research line--however recent studies have shown that males and females socialize into sports differently (Pemberton & Petlichkoff, 1988, p. 58). Through the 1970s, these attempts by the scientific community to explore psychological dimensions of athletic performance were limited. They were generally piecemeal, lacked a solid theoretical rationale, and were not part of any sustained investigative effort. Fortunately, in the literature produced by physical educators, psychologists, social psychologists, and sociologists of that time, there was some information that was indirectly relevant to many of the psychological and social dimensions inherent in athletic competition. Indeed, little experimental work carried out by behavioral scientists did not relate to some facet of sports participation in some way. For example, innumerable research investigations and some middle-level theory building have dealt with the way that physi

Category: Psychology - S