Sports Psychology I: its Importance in Physical Education and Sports, Motivation in Sports, its Types, Theories and Dynamics, the Psychological Factors Affecting Sports Performance, Emotions, Anxiety, Aggression, Stress, Self-Confidence, Concentration, Mental Practice and Goal Setting, and Personality, its Theories and Measurement

Motivation is the direction and intensity of effort: direction is what a person chooses to approach or avoid, and intensity how much effort they put in. Intrinsic motivation comes from within, from the enjoyment, challenge and satisfaction of the activity itself; extrinsic motivation comes from outside, from rewards such as medals, money, praise and selection, or from avoiding punishment. Extrinsic rewards are not always harmful, but cognitive evaluation theory (Deci and Ryan) holds that a reward perceived as controlling reduces intrinsic motivation, while one perceived as information about competence can increase it. Self-determination theory places motivation on a continuum from amotivation through external, introjected, identified and integrated regulation to intrinsic motivation, and holds that satisfying the needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness builds the more self-determined forms.

Achievement motivation theory (McClelland and Atkinson) explains behaviour as the balance of the motive to achieve success and the motive to avoid failure: high achievers seek realistic challenges of moderate difficulty and persist, while those dominated by fear of failure choose tasks that are very easy or impossibly hard. Achievement goal theory (Nicholls) distinguishes task (mastery) orientation, in which success means improving and mastering the skill, from ego (outcome) orientation, in which success means beating others; a task orientation, and a task-involving climate created by the coach, are linked to persistence, enjoyment and fair play. Attribution theory (Weiner) classifies the causes people give for success and failure by locus (internal or external), stability (stable or unstable) and controllability; attributing failure to unstable, controllable causes such as effort sustains motivation, while attributing it to stable, uncontrollable causes such as lack of ability can produce learned helplessness. Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Harter's competence motivation theory are also applied. The dynamics of motivation are that it changes with success and failure, feedback, the coach's behaviour, goals, rewards, the team climate and the athlete's stage of career.

Emotions are short-lived, intense feelings such as joy, anger, fear and disappointment, with physiological, cognitive and behavioural components; they affect attention, decision-making and muscle tension. Arousal is the general level of physiological and psychological activation, from deep sleep to intense excitement. Anxiety is a negative emotional state of nervousness and worry: state anxiety is the anxiety felt at a particular moment, and trait anxiety a stable tendency to perceive situations as threatening (Spielberger). Anxiety has a cognitive component (worry, negative thoughts) and a somatic component (butterflies, a racing heart, muscle tension). Stress is the imbalance between the demands of a situation and a person's perceived ability to meet them; Hans Selye's general adaptation syndrome describes the stages of alarm, resistance and exhaustion, and distinguishes harmful distress from positive eustress.

Several theories link arousal and performance. Drive theory (Hull; applied to sport by Spence) predicts that performance = habit strength × drive, so rising arousal improves performance of well-learned skills, but it fails to explain why experts sometimes choke. The inverted-U hypothesis, derived from Yerkes and Dodson (1908), holds that performance improves with arousal up to an optimal level and then declines; the optimum is lower for complex, fine skills (putting, archery, shooting) and higher for simple, gross skills (weightlifting, sprinting, tackling). Hanin's individual zones of optimal functioning (IZOF) propose that each athlete has a personal band of optimal anxiety, not necessarily moderate. Multidimensional anxiety theory (Martens and colleagues, 1990) predicts that cognitive anxiety harms performance in a straight line, somatic anxiety follows an inverted U and self-confidence helps. Catastrophe theory (Hardy and Fazey) predicts that when cognitive anxiety is high, rising physiological arousal past the optimum produces a sudden, large collapse in performance rather than a gradual decline, and recovery requires arousal to fall well below the point of collapse. Reversal theory (Apter) holds that the same high arousal can be felt as excitement or as anxiety depending on the person's state of mind.

Aggression in sport is behaviour intended to harm another person who does not want to be harmed. Hostile (reactive) aggression aims at harm for its own sake, usually in anger; instrumental aggression uses harm as a means to another goal, such as winning. Assertiveness is different: forceful, legitimate play within the rules with no intent to harm, such as a hard, fair tackle. Theories of aggression include instinct theory (Freud, Lorenz), which sees it as innate; the frustration–aggression hypothesis (Dollard and colleagues, 1939), which holds that frustration always leads to aggression; Berkowitz's revised version, in which frustration creates a readiness for aggression that environmental cues trigger; and Bandura's social learning theory, which holds that aggression is learned by observing and imitating models and is maintained by reinforcement, which is why the behaviour of coaches, parents and star players matters.

Self-confidence is the belief that one can successfully perform a desired behaviour. Bandura's self-efficacy theory (1977), self-confidence in a specific situation, names four sources in descending order of strength: performance accomplishments (past success), vicarious experiences (seeing similar others succeed), verbal persuasion (encouragement from coaches and self-talk) and physiological and emotional states (interpreting arousal as readiness rather than fear). Concentration is the ability to focus on relevant cues and maintain that focus; Nideffer's model describes attention on two dimensions, width (broad or narrow) and direction (internal or external), giving four styles: broad-external to read the field, broad-internal to plan, narrow-internal to rehearse and narrow-external to execute, as when a batter watches the ball. Mental practice, the cognitive rehearsal of a skill without movement, and imagery, using all the senses to create or recreate an experience, improve performance best when combined with physical practice; explanations include psychoneuromuscular theory (imagery produces small muscle innervation), symbolic learning theory (it helps code the movement's plan) and the PETTLEP model's advice to make imagery physical, environmental, task-specific, timed, learning-matched, emotional and from the right perspective. Goal setting (Locke and Latham) works when goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound (SMART), when process and performance goals are set alongside outcome goals, and when progress is monitored with feedback.

Personality is the sum of the characteristics that make a person unique and that are relatively consistent across situations and time. Hollander's model describes three levels: a psychological core (basic values, attitudes and self-concept, the most stable), typical responses (the usual ways of reacting) and role-related behaviour (the most changeable, shaped by the situation, such as being a captain). Trait theories describe personality by stable dispositions: Cattell's sixteen personality factors (16PF), Eysenck's dimensions of extraversion–introversion, neuroticism–stability and psychoticism, and the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism). Psychodynamic theory (Freud) stresses unconscious drives and the id, ego and superego. Humanistic theories (Maslow, Rogers) stress self-actualisation and the self-concept. Social learning theory (Bandura) holds that personality is shaped by observation, modelling and reinforcement. The interactional approach, following Lewin's formula B = f(P, E), holds that behaviour is a function of the person and the environment together, and is the view most sport psychologists take.

Personality is measured by self-report inventories and questionnaires (the 16PF, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Big Five inventories), by projective techniques in which responses to ambiguous stimuli are interpreted (the Rorschach inkblots, the Thematic Apperception Test), by observation and rating scales, and by interviews. Sport-specific instruments measure states rather than whole personalities, such as the Profile of Mood States (POMS); William Morgan found that successful athletes tend to show an "iceberg profile", below-average tension, depression, anger, fatigue and confusion with above-average vigour. Research has found no single "athletic personality" that reliably predicts success, and inventories should not be used to select teams; they are useful for self-understanding and for tailoring coaching.