The Emotion of Sports Performance and Motivation
The field of psychology is increasingly expanding and becoming incorporated into other fields of study. From the study of behavioral economics to the burgeoning field of media psychology (with its emphasis on the effects of advertising, especially on children), literally anything that can be thought of is a possible venue for the probing, empirical analysis of various strains of psychological theory. And why not? There are currently 54 different divisions of the American Psychological Association. Not all are actual theoretical perspectives posited by psychology—such as behaviorism or social psychology—some are merely fields of interest within which a psychological focus has been found to be academically useful, or clinically rewarding, or medically necessary. Such is the case with sports and exercise psychology (division 47). For a variety of reasons—the economic impact of the billions of dollars a year professional sports industry, the growth of empirical evidence suggesting exercise is good for us (both physically and psychologically), as well as the influence of sports on childhood development and academic achievement and socialization (as a negative correlation to school violence)—sports and psychology are increasingly mixing. This paper will take a look at the theoretical and scientific ways psychology is being used to explain and enhance sports performance from the parallel points of view of personality, motivational theory, emotion, and social cognition; all under the watchful eye of Freudian psychoanalysis. There is, of course, a reciprocal relationship between the reasons for, or why we need sports activity, and the motivation towards a qualitatively enhanced sports performance. The initial impetus for man to engage in sports may have been be to simply play at sports for leisure or diversion, but upon closer examination its clear there’s something more which drives our seeming obsession for sports (and this includes the growing fanaticism of
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