Participation Motivation in Sports

Chapter 2: Participation Motivation

• Motivation Definition: It is purposeful, goal-oriented behavior, influencing all forms of human behavior and is considered the "why" behind actions as well as habitual actions.
• Aspects of Motivational Behavior (DIP):
  • Direction: Refers to selecting or avoiding a specific activity, like choosing to play netball instead of hockey.
  • Intensity: Indicates how hard one tries, such as putting effort into practice and learning from mistakes.
  • Persistence: Represents how long one continues with an activity, such as participating in a sport despite its difficulty.
• Major Motives for Participation in Sport (DES):
  • Developing Competence: Involves improving sports skills and physical fitness.
  • Excitement and Enjoyment: Seeking thrill and satisfaction in playing, for example, a rugby player enjoying the game.
  • Social Acceptance and Support: Gaining friendships, peer approval, and support from significant others.
• Reasons for Moving Away from Sport: Includes boredom, coach-related issues, sitting on the bench, over-emphasis on winning, and other activities.
• Intrinsic Motivation: Is about individual enjoyment, satisfaction, and feelings of mastery from participating in sports, driven from within.
• Extrinsic Motivation: Is about participating in sports to receive external rewards like money, medals, trophies, and status, serving as an initial drive.
• Passion for Sport:
  • Harmonious Passion: Is intrinsically important, not overpowering, blends with other aspects of life, and shows little regard for extrinsic rewards.
  • Obsessive Passion: Forms part of one's identity, disrupts other aspects of life, is ego-invested, and reacts defensively.
• Factors Influencing Motivation (ERB)
  • Environmental: Social comparison, smaller communities increasing attention, physically active communities, and small town residents identifying with local teams.
  • Relative Age: Older children are over-represented in elite teams, leading to the perception of unequal competition, influenced by biological maturation and early success.
  • Birth Order: First-borns are under-represented in sports with high injury probability; second- or third-born children are over-represented in dangerous sports, possibly due to child-rearing practices.
• Needs as Basis for Motivation
  • Primary Needs: Mainly physiological needs crucial for survival, such as food, water, and rest.
  • Secondary Needs: Higher-order needs that are learned needs for recognition and achievement.
• Self-Actualization Theory: Emphasizes the importance of human needs as motivators of behaviours, ranging from basic to higher-order needs, with survival needs needing to be met first.
• Self-Actualization Theory Needs:
  • Physiological Needs: Includes identifying tired or hungry individuals and providing rest breaks
  • Security Needs: Focuses on creating safe environments
  • Affiliation Needs: Teamwork is essential for this
  • Need for Recognition: Using names on a board
  • Need for Self Actualisation: The need to be the best version of yourself
• Self-Determination Theory Needs: Focuses on the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Triangle: This hierarchy ranges from basic physiological needs at the bottom to self-actualization at the top and must be achieved in order

Chapter 5: Arousal, Anxiety, and Motor Performance

• Anxiety:
  • Anxiety includes constant worrying characterized by heightened physiological activation, negative thoughts, and feelings.
  • State Anxiety: Refers to the ever-changing mood component, with two types:
    • Cognitive State Anxiety: Concerns the degree to which one worries or has negative thoughts.
    • Somatic State Anxiety: Concerns moment-to-moment changes in perceived physiological activation.
  • Trait Anxiety: Is the part of the personality that influences behavior
• Stress: It refers to a variety of aversive emotional states, such as anxiety, depression, and anger.
• Arousal/Activation: It is defined as the energizing of the mind and body that leads to a state of high alertness, accompanied by physiological and psychological responses.
• Drive Theory: Performance is a function of drive and habit strength, with the physiological activation driving performance. It suggests a positive linear relationship between activation and performance.
• Inverted-U Theory: Performance increases with activation levels up to an optimal point, after which further increases lead to a gradual decline in performance. Optimal activation level depends on the task, athlete's ability, and personality.
• Zones of Optimal Functioning: Every athlete has a zone for optimal performance where anxiety falls, however if the player falls outside of that performance suffers.
• The Flow Approach: It is a state of consciousness where one is totally absorbed, where an athlete will perform at their peak. This is characterised due to the athlete having clear goals and feedback.
• Catastrophe Theory: Performance depends on the interaction between activation and cognitive anxiety. When cognitive anxiety is high, performance drops dramatically rather than gradually.
• Reversal Theory: Athletes shift in their interpretations of arousal, where high levels of activation can be either excitement (eustress) or anxiety (distress), and low levels can be boredom or relaxation.
• Proposed Theory Framework for Studying and Measuring Sport Anxiety:
  • Cognitive: Worry, self-focus, and self-evaluation.
  • Psychological: Muscle tension and hyperactivity of the autonomous system.
  • Regulatory: Perceived control and coping.
• Sources of Anxiety: Include fear of physical danger, the unpredictable, disruption of daily habits, and negative social evaluation.
• Effects of Anxiety:
  • Physiological: Accelerated heart rate, sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, and feeling of choking.
  • Psychological: Uncontrollable worry, difficulty concentrating, and making decisions.
• Measurement of Anxiety: Challenging, with sport psychology literature distinguishing between trait anxiety (stable characteristic) and state anxiety (specific situation).
• Practical Implications Regarding Arousal and Sport Performance: Activation should be limited when learning new skills, but can enhance performance of learned or simple skills. Serious athletes should over-learn their skills for automatic execution.
• Sources of Stress: Include novelty (unusual events) and unpredictability (events not going the usual way).
• Choking Under Pressure: Breakdown in self-regulation due to ego threat and emotional stress, causing normal mechanisms to disappear.
• Two Hypotheses to Explain Choking:
  • Explicit-Monitoring Hypothesis: Pressure induces conscious monitoring of movements, disrupting automatic skill execution.
  • Distraction Hypothesis: Pressure creates worry, consuming working memory resources needed to focus on the task.
• The Yips: Golf condition with symptoms of jerks, tremors, or freezing of the stroke, intensified by anxiety.

Chapter 7: Aggression in Sport

• Aggression: Behaviors frowned upon in daily life but encouraged in sports, to gain an advantage, not harm opponents.
• Importance of Aggression: Individuals gain a physical and psychological advantage, increasing success rate and attracting spectator's
• Types of Sport Aggression
  • Assertive Behavior: Is about intimidating behavior within accepted norms, with coaches expecting hard play. E.g. A rugby player crash tackling an opponent.
  • Hostile Aggression: Is done to harm the opponent, often accompanied by anger, is against the rules and is considered as ‘dirty play’.
  • Instrumental Aggression: Is done to harm the opponent with the intention to gain an external reward, involving dirty play.
• Kerr's Forms of Aggression
  • Play Aggression: Involves legalized acts within formal rules and norms.
  • Power Aggression: It is used to dominate the opposition, involving illegal acts that are justified by the aggressor to reach the desired outcome.
  • Anger Aggression: It presents as sudden and angry physical responses
  • Thrill Aggression: Often mindless, providing the aggressor with feelings of pleasure.
• Theories of Aggression
  • Instinct Theory: Aggression is unavoidable and a characteristic in all human beings, playing a cathartic role in society.
  • Frustration-Aggression Theory: Aggression is a natural response to frustration due to blocked goals, creating a climate to then act aggressively.
  • Social-Learning Theory: Is a circular effect where aggressive acts tend to lead to more aggression.
• Conditions Conductive to Aggression
  • Activation: Serves as a trigger, passionate players act more aggressively when under pressure, those who perceive that an opponent will hurt someone tend to act aggressively
  • Contest Location: Teams tend to be more aggressive when away from home.
  • Contest Structure: Greater score differences increase aggression, with losing teams being more aggressive.
• Types of Cheating
  • Institutionalised Cheating: Legalised behavior. Wasting time
  • Deviant Cheating: Is frowned upon. Doping

Chapter 8: Team Cohesion

• Group/Social Cohesion: Extent to which the group in whole is strongly committed to the group.
• Task Cohesion: Degree to which group members work together to achieve their goal.
• Interactive Sports: Sports that coordinate together. E.g. Netball
• Coactive Sports: Sports with little coordination. E.g. Golf
• Advantages: Members of a group feel obligation towards the group, creating a sense of security, trust, and effective communication.
• Disadvantages: May lead to conformity, pressure to engage in unacceptable behaviors, social loafing, and less productivity from worrying about teammates' feelings.
• Factors that Promote Team Cohesion:
  • Team Goals: Clear goals and defined strategies
  • Clearly Defined Roles: Defined, understood, and accepted roles.
  • Proximity: Opportunity for interaction, building a "we" feeling.
  • Communication: Opportunity to express ideas and view, increased loyalty
  • Similarity: Can emphasise similarities in attitudes
  • Distinctiveness: Team apparel
  • Group Size: Small group
  • Sacrifices: Increased attraction towards group
  • Hard work: Experiencing tough times
  • Cooperation: Working together
  • Stability: Team membership remains the same for a long period of time.
  • Success: Relationship between cohesion and success is reciprocal

Chapter 9: Spectators and Sport

• Spectator Behavior: Those who support winning teams often wear merchandise, more people attend games of successful teams, and fans may experience personal humiliation when a team loses.
• Theories Explaining Spectator Misbehavior:
  • Contagion Theory: The mood spreads from one member to the entire group by means of suggestion and modelling
    • Spectators become anonymous, feeling a sense of invincibility.
  • Emerging-Norm Theory: Spectators feel bound by new norms of behavior within a group setting,
    • Spectators will conform to these norms under pressure
  • Convergence Theory: Certain personalities converge to express their anti-social behavior, prepared and armed for violence.
  • Social-Conflict Theory: Disruptive outbursts indicate tensions, using sports events to air out grievances.
  • Frustration Theory: Frustration leads to outbursts due to long lines and crowding, with unclear personal space and deprivation of rights.
• Alcohol:
  • Often causes unacceptable behavior.
    • Can take several forms like: childishness, aggression,
• The Media:
  • Media attention can become a source of stress, journalists are only concerned with headlines, prepare athletes when dealing with media
• Home Ground Advantage: Nations win more in home games than away games
  • Better performance and less strain

Chapter 10-11: The Coach

• The Coach as LEADER
  • An ideal coach should be knowledgeable, diligent, willing to learn, and flexible to listen.
  • Personality traits include emotional stability, creativity, assertiveness, and intelligence.
  • Has a relationship with their players
• Leadership Styles in Sport and Advantages:
  • Autocratic: Tough-minded with bold decision-making.
  • Laissez-faire: Players make their own decisions
  • Mix (Democratic): Team members take part in decision-making
• Primary Roles of Leaders: Includes executive officer, planner, policy maker, expert, group representative, internal relations controller, provider of rewards and punishment, and scapegoat.
• Behavior Associated with Leadership: People-oriented and task-oriented.
• The Contingency Approach: Adjusting leadership style to the demands of the situation, where flexibility is desirable.
  • Very favorable/unfavorable situations use task-orientation, other circumstances use people orientation.
• Alternative Leadership Styles
  • Passive-Avoidance style: Ineffective
  • Transactional Style: Rewards
  • Transformational Style: Innovative
  • Servant Style: Serves the needs of their followers
• Reinforcement Definition: Strengthening a behavior through application of consequences.
• Positive Reinforcement: It is extrinsic or intrinsic.
• Negative Reinforcement: Is when a negative side effect is removed
• Extinction: Method of eliminating negative behavior by removing attention, followed by strengthening desirable behavior with positive reinforcement.
• Guidelines for Using Reinforcement:
  • Be sincere when providing reinforcement and make it clear what the praise is for
• When Delivering Constructive Criticism: Mention the good parts, then the bad and end with it positively
• Sources of Reinforcement:
  • Players should praise each other and the coach
• Types of Reinforcement:
  • Technical Feedback
  • Material Rewards
  • Verbal Reinforcement
• Shortcomings of Punishment: Neglects positive reinforcement, focuses on negative behavior, and lacks positive coaching aspects.