Performance psychology. What the…?
- Jul 30, 2018
- 2 min read
As athletes, we had access to a sports psychologist to help us perform at our best. But it shouldn’t only be sportspeople who benefit from mental skills training to help them be better tomorrow than they were today. This is where ‘performance psychology’ comes in.
Performance psychology is the study of factors that either contribute to or impede performance. In practice, it teaches mental skills needed for peak performance in whatever context.
Sports psychology really just is performance psychology applied to sports people. Sport and sports psychology is an integral part of performance psychology. Not only are sports people and their stories visible to us on a daily basis, but athletes have been the focus of scientific inquiry for more than a century. Techniques for peak performance in sport began to be applied to other populations from around the 1960s, and we now call it performance psychology.
Performance psychology can be applied to domains as diverse as business, the performing arts, the military and education, but it doesn’t stop there.
“Everyone ‘performs' on a daily basis in everything they do,” says Professor Peter Terry. “Any technique or strategy that can be applied to enhance effectiveness or a sense of wellbeing could be placed under the heading of performance psychology.” Psychologist and former professional dancer Associate Professor Gene Moyle agrees. “The strategies and approach that you take doesn’t change too much, but the context or the application does.”
Performance psychologists help to identify barriers to the peak performance of teams and individuals, such as too much anxiety or stress, a lack of motivation, and/or distraction; and devise strategies to overcome them. On the same token, they help to build effective social, psychological, cognitive and emotional skills.
Skills found to be important for peak performance, identified by systematic research, include; • self-efficacy (having confidence in one’s own capability), • causal attribution (having a helpful explanatory style), • goal setting, • planning, • imagery, • helpful self-talk, • self-regulation, • attention management/focus, and • self- determination (the capacity to choose and for these decisions to be the determinations of one's action).
I like to think of performance psychology as a branch of applied positive psychology (a branch that does not overlook the correction of deficits – a common criticism of positive psychology). After all, performance is relative. To one person it may mean winning the World Cup, and to another it may be getting out of bed in the morning.
But it is all about being better tomorrow than you are today.
Aoyagi, M. W., & Portenga, S. T. (2010). The role of positive ethics and virtues in the context of sport and performance psychology service delivery. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 41(3), 253.
Deci, E.L., & Ryan, R.M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York, NY, USA: Plenum.
Hays, K. F., & Brown, C. H. (2004). You’re on!: Consulting for peak performance. Sport Psychologist, 18, 471-472.
Terry, P. (2008). Performance psychology: Being the best, the best you can be, or just a little better? InPsych.
The Psychlopaedia Team. (2016). Performance psychology 101. https://psychlopaedia.org/work-and-performance/performance-psychology-101/
Comments