Notes for Lesson 1 PDF

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Notes for Lesson 1...

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Introduction to Sport and Exercise Psychology ● ●

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Social loafing: reducing your effort as the group gets larger (diffusing responsibility) Sport & Exercise Psychology: study of people & their behavior in sport & exercise ○ 2 primary objectives: ■ Learn how psychological factors affect an indiv’s physical performance ● (how the psychological self affects the physical self) ■ Understand how participation in sport & exercise affects a person’s psychological development, health, and well-being ● (how the physical self affects the psychological self) ○ What do sport & exercise psychologists do? (3 domains) ■ Educational: Consult w/ indiv. athletes to develop psychological skills that enhance performance ■ Academic: teaching in departments of kinesiology, psychology, … ■ Research: contribute to and extend the body of knowledge ● Understand, explain, and predict sport and exercise behavior 3 Sources of knowledge about human social behavior (how do you acquire knowledge and how do you “know” things?) ○ 1. Common Sense: (social philosophy - what you know doesn’t need to be traditionally taught to you) ■ How do we “punish” infractions (violations of rules) in sports? ● Ex. A kid won’t listen to coach and is being disruptive to the other kids ○ You could stop practice, single the kid out, and make them run laps for rest of practice ○ No one ever taught the coach to make running laps a punishment, it just makes sense to the coach ■ How do you get teams “psyched-up” for a big game/tournament? ● Ex. Have them jump around together singing their fight song, motivational/inspirational speeches, have them listen to loud fun music ○ 2. Practical Experience (social empiricism - gain knowledge from previous experiences in a social setting, make judgements about those experiences, then form your knowledge base) ■ **knowledge based on practical experiences & observations can often be flawed or inaccurate ● Something you saw may work for one athlete but not for another (they are not all the same) ○ 3. Scientific Knowledge (social analysis - systematic, controlled, empirical (unbiased) investigations about relationships among phenomena) ■ Designed to challenge the accuracy of commonly held myths ■ Scientific method dominates this source - so most accurate source of knowledge (and what we will focus on for this entire class) Goal of science: to explain, understand, and predict behavior thru systematic theory building Theory: general rule or principle about the relationships among variables that describe, explain, and predict phenomena about behavior Scientific Method example: ○ Question: What is the relationship b/t physical activity and anxiety? ■ Answer: Physical activity makes people less anxious ○ Variables: Physical activity and Anxiety ○ Observed relationship: higher levels of activity are associated with less anxiety ■ An inverse relationship (As one goes up, other goes down) Scientific method: is highly reliable, systematic and controlled, and objective and unbiased ○ Systematic: does the relationship hold under all conditions? ■ Ex. “Do increases of physical activity always result in a decrease in anxiety?” ○ Controlled: Potential external influences are taken into account and ”controlled” so as to not influence the key relationship (control for other variables that might affect the relationship being tested)

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Empirical: relationships are based on observation, therefore there must be objective evidence to support the relationship being tested ■ Ex. if you noticed this relationship in you, your friend, other people, … then if you test it, you should be able to see the relationship in other people ○ Critical: the method is open to rigorous evaluation by the researcher and other scientists ■ This ensures reliability of conclusions How will we test the Activity-Anxiety relationship? ○ Use a variety of settings ■ (does it work under controlled (lab) and non-controlled (at home) conditions?) ○ Test a large representative population of people ■ Is the relationship the same across age, race, …? ○ Use many different measures ■ Does the survey data match the experiemental data? Does the experiment using one measure result in the same conclusion as another measure of the same variable? ○ Why do all these different things? ■ To determine whether the relationship is reliable or not (and if it actually exists) Construct: a concept defined for a specific scientific purpose ○ Can’t see constructs, they are inferred from behavior ○ Ex. How do you know when someone is anxious? ■ Girl in video said she gets blurry vision, feels dizzy and shaky, her thoughts race, difficult to focus, she gets hot & cold flashes, and eventually faints ■ What about things you can measure/you can see (not just in her body)? ● You can’t see the construct of anxiety ● But could measure blood pressure, heart rate, face gets flushed, biting nails, sweating, breathing rate ● **however not everyone shows anxiety in the same way ● *Also, someone who is breathing fast and is sweaty may not be having an anxiety attack, they may just be done working out at the gym ○ So variables need to be both observable and measurable ○ So a way to define anxiety is a negative emotional state in which feelings of worry, apprehension, or arousal of the body Studies and experiments: methods that allow scientists to build, support, and refute theory ○ Studies: Often involve observation of relationships in naturalistic settings ○ Ex. A study determining whether physically active people are less anxious ■ Measure anxiety levels & activity levels ■ **Even if these are correlated you are not done! Need to establish a cause-effect relationship in order to make this conclusion (using an experiment) ○ Experiments: involves the manipulation of variables, as well as observing them ■ Examine how changes in one variable causes change in another ■ Need control and experimental group ■ Ex. An experiment determining whether physically active people are less anxious ● Assign subjects to an exercise group or resting control group ● Assess anxiety levels before & after exercise or sitting Criticisms of the scientific method ○ Reductionistic: experiments are isolated to smaller parts (no “big picture”) ○ Lacks external validity: cannot generalize to all situations ○ Conservative: slow to evolve For sports psychology, we need to integrate professional experience and scientific knowledge to enhance application of knowledge and performance...