Archive for the ‘Sport Psychology Applied’ Category

Can you remember a big win in your past? Take a second and recall a particular accomplishment, it could be in a sport, in the office, at home, etc… Now see if you can remember why it was that you succeeded. Its likely that if you’re genuinely recalling a “big win,” you attributed that win to something within you, to your own efficacy.

“Big win” usually draws on memory of those wins that we feel good about and believe were brought about by our own potentials (IE: not the result of random chance).

The process of evaluating outcomes and their reasons ties in directly with another motivation model in sport psychology:

Attribution Thoery

Attribution Theory has to do with what we attribute to be the cause of the event or result, and how these attributions affect our decisions and actions… our motivation.

Luckily for those of you with only a few minutes to spare, this theory is a bit easier to draw out than the Atkinson’s Model :}.

 

1 and 2) Event —> Outcome

      These two factors have to do with reality outside ourselves (for simplicity’s sake I’m not going to get Philosophical on that issue now). There is some kind of occurrence or phenomena, and it results in another occurrence, situation or effect. For instance; you set a goal to organize your house and despite your efforts, your living space still seems to be in shambles. 

3 and 4) Past Event Analysis —> Reason Why

      After the event itself occurs, we of course must make sense of it. We reference our prior experiences and come to determine a reason why the event occurred. For instance, we might come to remember hearing that habits related to organization are nearly impossible to change. Or we might recall another instance where we weren’t able to follow through on our plans and it was because of poor planning and information gathering.

5 and 6) Emotional Response —> Motivation

 

 

 

 

 

      Once we have started to evaluate our situation (which begins happening in an instant), we develop emotional responses to it. These emotional responses driven by our evaluation will weigh heavily on our motivation to approach or avoid the particular event or activity. For instance, realizing that we did not gather enough information to become organized might bring us to become excited about making better plans and taking more effective action. This excited emotional response will probably make us more likely to approach this activity in the future.

So, in the Attribution Model we have an event and a result > followed by a sifting through memories and an eventual “reason why,” determined by our mind > which gives rise to an emotional response that bears heavily on our future motivation to approach or avoid something.

 

Understanding Attributions:

      In Attribution Theory, attributions are either internal or external, stable or unstable, controllable or uncontrollable.

Stable – Increased expectancy of the same.

Controllable – Increased motivation.

Internal – Increased sense of pride (in success) or shame (in failure).

      These are the four attributions that are said to show up more than any others.

Ability – If you succeed, its because you’re talented, if you fail, its because you’re not endowed enough.

Task Difficulty – If you win, the task was too easy, if you loose, the task was too hard.

Effort - Success implies that you tried hard, failure implied that you did not try hard enough.

Luck – Both success and failure are entirely determined by chance, your control is limited or non-existent. 

Understanding these four attributions in the context of controllability, stability, and internality/externality, we can begin to imagine the vast consequences of the evaluations we make on the actions we take in the present and future.

Lets explore some ideas for applying this motivational understanding to our own lives.

 

Applications:

Understanding Evaluation – One massively important lesson to be learned from this model of motivation is the relevance of our evaluations. It should come as no surprise that we are constantly seeking to make sense of our experience of reality. We are making conscious and subconscious evaluations almost every second of our lives. 

It might be helpful to consciously follow these thoughts as the come about – especially those which attribute our “success” or “failure” to different factors. Are these factors generating enthusiasm for future action and the realization of our dreams? Are they bringing us to experience emotional pain and cease action? It might be useful to see what purpose these evaluations actually serve.

Taking on Adaptive Perspectives – Since we are constantly evaluating, and since these evaluations drastically impact our emotional experience and motivation, is it not logical to strive for an understanding of what attributions would be best for us?

We might be wary of attributing our win to factors of luck – as this likely doesn’t motivate us to achieve anything more, or even to prepare ourselves more thoroughly since it is randomness that brought us victory.

We might also be wary of attributing our loss to an uncontrollable level of ability, for example. This might bring us to believe that it is our innate qualities that led to the failure – and hence effort is wasted on even striving for success.

It seems most adaptive, here, for us to focus on those factors which are under our own control. Certainly there are factors outside our control, and understanding them is likely important as well, but focusing on them will not bring about our proactive betterment. We can only take action on those factors which we can affect and exert a degree of control over.

Controllable factors seem inherently to be internal and unstable. A focus on factors outside our own faculties (other than a rational understanding, or a “taking into account”) isn’t likely to be productive. For instance, if I fail at my first attempt at organizing my room, mentally “honing in” on the fact that my parents weren’t organized (and so I could never be) probably isn’t ideal for my own productivity. 

It is worthwhile to note that these controllable factors are usually associated with being unstable. If they were stable, they would not be able to be altered by our behavior. If we believe our skills are stable, then there is little rationale to train. If we believe our capacity for organization is fixed, than we don’t even believe we could become more organized through honed effort. If we believe that the immense initial difficulty of organizing old files is fixed, then we will never attempt to break the task down and process it differently – to consider the challenge differently.

Many common evaluations / attribution seems to actually be further from reality than this positive view which I’ve been espousing. It is clear that to a great degree, our abilities are pliable – and that a belief otherwise may be farther from the truth, and have detrimental consequences to our development.

There should be a clear distinction between this view and blind optimism. With this view we can aim to take account of all the factors involved in our objectives, and focus consciously on those that we are able to actually implement action in accordance with. With our minds honed in this regard, we see possibility and not limitation – and so are brought to realize our initial objectives and realize our dreams and goals.

Attribution and Belief - Another important lesson to be learned through attribution theory is the importance of belief in our evaluations. For instance, if we believe that our levels of skill, or happiness – or even effort – are predetermined, then we have no impetus to attempt self-improvement. 

Hence, we might bring ourselves to come to adopt new empowering beliefs – to dig deeper for evidence and support them. 

 

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Keep an eye out for my ebook on Sport Psychology. In it I’m going to apply the ideas of Sport Psychology to life off the court – where many of the ideas have MORE relevance (IE: managing anxiety, understanding motivation, goal setting, and much more)

 

 

 

 

 

      This will begin a series of posts all related to ideas of sport psychology applied to our lives. I’m pretty darn excited to get this series rolling!

      Lets begin by defining Sport Psychology:

The scientific study of people an their behavior in sport and exercise. This study serves two primary objectives: to learn how psychological factors influence physical performance, and to learn how participation in sport and exercise influence our psychological well-being. 

      As we’ll explore in agonizing detail, these psychological understandings and models are functional in terms of understanding performance in general – be it in a swimming pool or on a computer chair.

          Now onto the area of today’s blog – motivational theory. There are a lot of theories on motivation in and out of sport psychology, and each of you reading this likely have your own set of beliefs and assumptions for achievement. Here’s a famous model in sport psychology:

 

    Atkinson’s Model of Achievement Motivation:

Interactional approach:

        B = f(P, E)       

Translation:       

Behavior = a function of Personality Traits and Environment Certainty

 

 

 

Personality Factors:

Ms - Motive to approach success – capacity to experience satisfaction in accomplishment.

Maf - Motive to avoid failure – capacity to experience humiliation as a failure consequence.

      It is important to note that we all have both tendencies within us as people. These aspects of our personality show themselves in different contexts.

P = (Ms – Maf)

      Generally, a “high achiever” is deemed to be someone with high motivation to succeed and low motivation to avoid failure – while the “low achiever” is deemed to be someone with high motivation to avoid failure and low motivation to succeed.

Ms > Maf (This person is more driven by price and achievement than by fear)

      -Tends to seek achievement situations

      -Performs well when being evaluated

      -Focus on pride / satisfaction

      -Seek a reasonable challenge

Ms < Maf (This person is motivated by avoiding humiliation more than eagerness to grow)

      -Avoid achievement situations

      -Perform poorly inevaluative situations

      -Focus on shame / failure

      -Choose very easy or very hard tasks

      You probably know a few people in both the above categories. The person motivated by success looks to test and expand his skills and tends not to dwell upon outcome. The person motivated by avoiding failure likes certainty. If they play and loose against insurmountable odds, then its not their fault. If they play a game that they will easily win, they are still not threatened.

      People motivated by failure avoidance tend to avoid instances where they would have to apply effort to win. If they loose after applying effort, then they might be thought of as worse than their opponent – “failure.”

      Haven’t we seen this dynamic play out countless times in our lives? Think about all that YOU would do if you didn’t consider “failure” as failure. Do you think you would accomplish more, or less? Then think about magnifying and multiplying your aversion to the idea of failure. Would your life experience be more or less enriching?

 

Situational Factors:

Ps – Probability of success – likelihood that one will succeed.

Is – Incentive value of success – the value to place upon success.

      The probability of success in this model ranges from 0 – 1. 0 represents knowing we have nearly no chance of success, 1 represents knowing that we will almost certain succeed.

The incentive value of success is calculated as: 1 – Ps

      So, the more likely we are to succeed, the less value we assign to achieving itself. If how pumped are you when you beat your 7 year-old niece in a game of scrabble? Not very. However, how excited do you think you would feel if you beat the world’s best Chess player? The message: The bigger the dragon, the mightier is the knight who slays it - I think most people feel this intuitively. 

E = (Ps)(Is)

      If E (environmental uncertainty) is low, we feel relatively certain about the future results of our pursuit. If it is high, we feel uncertain about the outcome. Lets see how this dynamic plays out:

      Lets say you’re playing one on one basketball against Kobe Bryant. Your Ps (probability of success) is likely to be pretty low – functionally a 0 – unless my blog readers happen to be other pro basketball players. I’ll assume you’re not . In this case, your Is (incentive value of success) is a 1. If you beat Kobe, you would probably freak out and potentially brag about it forever – maybe even put it on your gravestone:

“Here lies so-and-so, in 2009 he beat Kobe Bryant in a game of hoops.”

      In this case then, your E (environmental uncertainty) = (0)(1) = 0.  We know what’s going to happen here. We’re going to get dunked on a bunch of times and walk away never touching the ball for over 4 seconds. 

      Lets look at another example. Lets say we’re playing basketball against someone at about our own skill level. We estimate our Ps to be .5, in which case our Is is .5 as well (Is = 1 – Ps). 

Now our E (environmental uncertainty) = (.5)(.5) = .25

.5 for Ps is the highest level of uncertainty we can get. This challenge could very easily go either way. 

 

      This model may not be the most popular model today, but it provides some interesting application of a value-expectancy theory. 

      Are there times in your work day where you conquer relatively unimportant but certain tasks before important and uncertain ones? Despite having a massive project due, or a presentation, or a writing project you aren’t so sure about – do you convince yourself that cleaning your desk or organizing your kitchen are the best action for you?

      This might give us insight into our own tendencies and motives, and allow us to more consciously determine our tendencies. 

      These simplified distinctions might bring us to realize that the motives we act on are not motives we want to habitually act on – and are not conducive to the kind of character and life we want for ourselves. 

      Or we might find certain instances in our lives where we seek challenge fully (we express motive to success and yearn for more uncertainty – around a .5 on the possibility of success scale – and for a real challenge), and other instances where we hinder ourselves and our growth (we focus on fear of humiliation and aim for certainty in the results of our task).

      Knowing this might allow us to bring our positive, growth / achievement-oriented tendencies into other situations!

      Even with a few ideas in a simple model, we can come to gain a richer view of our behavior.

 

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Keep an eye out for my ebook on Sport Psychology. In it I’m going to apply the ideas of Sport Psychology to life off the court – where many of the ideas have MORE relevance (IE: managing anxiety, understanding motivation, goal setting, and much more)