Personality in Sports Psych

1. Personality in Sports Psych

2. Characteristics that make a person unique. Defining Personality

3. Parts of Personality

4. How do You Typically Respond?

5. When a friend asks you for a favor When your parents ask you to do something In a group of friends at school In a group of friends away from school

6. Does the Situation Matter?

7. Heinz’s wife was dying from a particular type of cancer. Doctors said a new drug might save her. The drug had been discovered by a local chemist and the Heinz tried desperately to buy some, but the chemist was charging ten times the money it cost to make the drug and this was much more than the Heinz could afford. Heinz could only raise half the money, even after help from family and friends. He explained to the chemist that his wife was dying and asked if he could have the drug cheaper or pay the rest of the money later. The chemist refused saying that he had discovered the drug and was going to make money from it. The husband was desperate to save his wife, so later that night he broke into the chemist’s and stole the drug.

8. Judy was a twelve-year-old girl. Her mother promised her that she could go to a special rock concert coming to their town if she saved up from baby-sitting and lunch money to buy a ticket to the concert. She managed to save up the fifteen dollars the ticket cost plus another five dollars. But then her mother changed her mind and told Judy that she had to spend the money on new clothes for school. Judy was disappointed and decided to go to the concert anyway. She bought a ticket and told her mother that she had only been able to save five dollars. That Saturday she went to the performance and told her mother that she was spending the day with a friend. A week passed without her mother finding out. Judy then told her older sister, Louise, that she had gone to the performance and had lied to her mother about it. Louise wonders whether to tell their mother what Judy did.

9. Two young men, brothers, had got into serious trouble. They were secretly leaving town in a hurry and needed money. Karl, the older one, broke into a store and stole a thousand dollars. Bob, the younger one, went to a retired old man who was known to help people in town. He told the man that he was very sick and that he needed a thousand dollars to pay for an operation. Bob asked the old man to lend him the money and promised that he would pay him back when he recovered. Really Bob wasn't sick at all, and he had no intention of paying the man back. Although the old man didn't know Bob very well, he lent him the money. So Bob and Karl skipped town, each with a thousand dollars.

10. Personality Theories

11. Conflict between the parts of our consciousness: Id, Ego, Superego • Defense mechanisms • Rationalization • Identification • Displacement • Projection • Regression • Reaction Formation • Repression • Not much support Psychodynamic

12. There are fundamental, relatively stable units of personality Example: “Big Five” Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism Environment does not matter Not much support Trait

13. Situation is the most important determinant of behavior Environment dictates how a person will act Not widely accepted Situational

14. Personal factors and situations work together to influence behavior Highly individual Most widely accepted theory Interactional

15. Focuses on a person’s subjective experience and interpretation of an event Most prominent sports psych theories fall in this category Phenomenological

16. Personality Testing

17. General Specific • Test broad categories • Ex. Big Five personality test • Test for a particular topic • Sport Confidence Inventory Different Measures

18. Trait State • Typical style of behaving • Example: How anxious people get • Situation’s effect on behavior • Example: How anxious people become before tests Measures

19. -“Sport Competition Anxiety Test” (Martens, 1977) -“Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2” (Martens, et. al., 1982) -“Trait-State Confidence Inventory” (Vealey, 1986) “Profile of Mood States” Examples of Personality Tests

20. Which personality test did you feel was most accurate? Why? In what setting might personality testing be appropriate? When would it be a bad idea to use personality tests? Journal Entry 02/06/14

21. Know the Principles of Testing and Measurement Error Know Your Limitations Do Not Use Psych Tests for team selection Include Explanation and Feedback Assure athletes of confidentiality Take an intra-individual approach (how people feel at a moment relative to how they usually feel) Understand and Assess Specific Personality Components Principles for using Personality tests in sports Don’t Use Personality Tests to Select for Teams

22. Do Don’t • Inform athletes how the test will be used • Allow only qualified individuals to give it • Use sport-specific measures whenever possible • Use both trait and state specific measures • Provide specific feedback • Compare individuals to themselves and not others • Use clinical personality tests to study average populations • Use personality tests to determine who makes the team • Use them unless you are qualified • Use them as the sole source to predict behavior Dos and Don’ts of Personality testing

23. Selected Research

24. No specific personality profile has been found that consistently distinguishes athletes from nonathletes Difference Between Athletes and Nonathletes

25. Team Sports Individual Sports • exhibit less abstract reasoning • more extroversion • more dependency • less ego strength • display higher levels of objectivity • more dependency • less anxiety • less abstract thinking Difference between Individual and Team Sports

26. Women athletes are more: • Achievement oriented • Independent • Aggressive • Emotionally Stable • Assertive than the normative female • These are also personality traits that make good male athletes Female Athletes

27. A Personality vs. B Personality • People with Type A behavior have a higher risk for cardiovascular disease. • Exercise can reduce both the risk and the behavior • Exercise is linked to improved self-esteem and self-concept (perception of fitness rather than actual improvement)

28. Cognitive Strategies

29. Overachieving high school athletes scored higher on coachability, concentration, coping with adversity Elite athletes show superior ability to cope with adversity and mentally prepare Olympic medal-winning wrestlers used more positive self-talk, more immediate focus of attention, and were better prepared mentally for unforeseen negative events Ideas that improve performance

30. practice plans to deal with adversity practice routines to deal with unusual circumstances and distractions concentrate on the performance and block out distractions use mental rehearsals before the competition Improving Cognitive Strategies

31. Profile of Mood States

32. Profile of Mood States (POMS) • POMS is a mental health model that predicts high levels of performance • “Iceberg Profile” most desirable, most successful athletes

33. Normative Data (The average for Various Athletes)