Psychological Structures that Shape a Person's Actions

Psychology has revealed how the learning perspective is concerned with the environment and experiences leading to effects on a person’s actions. Within this perspective, behaviorists focus on the environmental rewards and punishers that maintain or discourage specific behaviors. B.F. Skinner once stated, I am sometimes asked, ‘Do you think of yourself as you think of the organisms you study?’ The answer is yes. So far as I know, my behavior at any given moment has been nothing more than the product of my genetic endowment, my personal history, and the current setting. (Skinner, 1983). In the average college classroom, behaviorism effects students’ way of learning in that their behavior is shaped by either positive or negative reinforcement.

These aggressive attitudes and tendencies have been shown to have effects on one's judgement and the perception of their environment. An athlete with an over aggressive attitude who's judgement becomes clouded by aggression develops a disregard foe the opponent(s) that their aggression is being aimed at." I think the aggressiveness in sports - just making the play, charging past people or dominating somebody physically - really needs to be separated by athletes from appropriate off field behavior."(Tom Jackson, Univ. Arkansas psychology professor.)

Funder (2007), states that personality is a combination of how people think, feel and behave, with the psychological mechanisms behind those patterns. Therefore, it can be defined as consistent behaviour patterns and processes which happen in the mind of the individual. These behaviour patterns suggest that there are individual differences and that personality is consistent. The combination of these areas, and confliction of these is what psychologist’s try to understand.

Sports—which involve emotion, competition, cooperation, achievement, and play—provide a rich area for psychological study. People involved in sports attempt to master very difficult skills, often subjecting themselves to intense physical stress as well as social pressure. research has expanded into numerous areas such as imagery training, hypnosis, relaxation training, motivation, socialization, conflict and competition, counseling, and coaching. Specific sports and recreational specialties studied include baseball, basketball, soccer,

The present review will analyze and critique five empirical sport psychology-related research articles. Moreover, the discussion of each article will include which statistical method was used, why it was used, and whether or not it was appropriate for the data. In addition, the article discussion will include a description and possible critique of the author’s interpretations of the results.

Personality and how we behave have been of much interest to psychologists for a long time now and because of this there have been many theories and theorists that have been developed. Personality is defined as consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within and individual (Fritzley, 2012, p. 10). There are six main approaches to personality psychology they include: biological approach, humanistic approach, behaviorist approach, trait approach, psychoanalytic approach and cognitive approach. Each approach shines a little light onto why we behave the way we do and how our personalities are formed, the approaches contain many different theories from

The purpose of this assignment was to observe and analyze the behaviors of UC Davis athletes on an NCAA Intercollegiate sports team. I was able to observe the athletes in their natural setting and observe their behaviors before, during and after the game. This assignment is important because we are observing athletes without interfering. This gives the researcher the ability to observe their natural behavior while playing the game. From this experience we are trying to learn the different behaviors that each player has, or if they have any similarities. We are also learning how players interact with their team, their coaches and the crowd.

“Sports psychology offers a contribution to the search for reasons of abandon by combining development, the overall skills of the young men with the acquisition of those sports. The interest in seeking motivation for participation emerges in the 1970s with a study led by Alderman and Wood (1976) with young Canadian athletes. These authors found that

Personality has been of interest to sport physiologists and researchers for a very long time, dating back to around the 1800s, the reason why it is of such is interest is because they want to find out how personality affects someone when they are doing sport as to what personality makes them better at specific sports compared to other people. But as it is hard to find a direct link from someone’s personality to the specific set of skills they have, there is very little evidence which shows what personality helps someone become good at a specific sport.

The field of sports psychology is only beginning. A short while ago in 1898 an experiment that was conducted by Norman Triplett successfully discovered a positive correlation between a biker’s performance and a social component or audience. Since then the only major progress has been the sports psychology lab established at the University of Illinois in 1925. The man responsible for the lab Coleman Griffith has also offered courses that teach the nature of sports psychology. Griffith’s research focuses on the factors that effect athletic performance such as “reaction time, mental awareness, muscular tension and relaxation, and personality”. Fortunately, a new study has surfaced the Psychology

The Lexical hypothesis allowed many factors to emerge, leading to the emerging of the five main factors (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism), (Costa & McCrae, 1995).

Physical skill and pure athleticism alone is not enough to deal with the high demands of being an athlete. Therefore, many coaches and athletes turn to sports psychologist for assistance in enhancing their individual or team performance. “Sport Psychologists assist people by helping them to develop the skills necessary to become mentally strong, and prevent them from choking in key situations” (Mauro, 2005). An increasing number of athletes are utilizing Mental Skills Training (MST) and Sport Psychology Programs (SPP) to improve their confidence and feel more in control of their performance in their sport. The beauty of this is that everyone can benefit from improving and strengthening their mental skills. It doesn’t only benefit the strong athletes, but also the athletes who are beginners. Strong mental skills can help an athlete achieve a more consistent physical performance by learning how to regulate the mental aspects of

Children who participate in sports are developing rapidly in sports skills, sportsmanship, and psychologically, but does this come from organized sports are just nature’s process. Children develop emotional and social benefits from participating in sports. Children experience character and leadership development through peer relations leading to an increase in self-esteem and a decrease in anxiety levels. Children will get opportunities to experience positive and negative emotions throughout their practice and games trials. It is important for the coach to understand the “psychology of youth sports and physical activity participation” (Weinberg & Gould, 2011 p.516).

In describing what personalities are like, Kelly abandons the classical threefold division of psychological phenomena: cognition, affection and conation (Kelly, 1955, p.130). Instead, he formulates his own personality theory with a single structure named "Construct". In this section, let's review the concept of construct and some of its features.

This essay will give a description of Personality before critically analysing the biological basis of personality approach. The biological basis approach tries to account for the mechanisms between genes and personality by looking at various different brain structures whilst the biochemical approach looks at the impact of hormones and neurotransmitters. The majority of our understanding of personality from a biological perspective focuses on the three main behavioural systems; the reward system, the motivation system and the punishment system. Within this essay I will be discussing the three main theories that have come from these ideas, Eyenck’s three-factor model, Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) and Cloningers model of personality.