This document summarizes several key concepts in sport psychology: 1) It defines the three components of an attitude in sport - cognitive, affective, and behavioral elements. 2) It explains how attitudes in sport can be formed through past experiences, attributions, social learning from significant others, and socialization. 3) It discusses how undesirable prejudices like racism or sexism can be changed through cognitive dissonance, persuasion from others, influencing behavior, and addressing beliefs and emotions. 4) It analyzes the positive and negative effects an audience can have on sports performance according to drive theory, RAS theory, and other psychological theories.

1. Psychology: January 2007

2. Attitude often reveal
undesirable prejudice in sport.
Using examples of sport, describe what is
meant by an attitude in sport (3)
 Predisposition towards an attitude object.(e.g.
training)/ sets of beliefs and feelings
 Cognitive element/ a belief about training/playing
well/participation.
 Affective element (e.g. positive or negative
feelings towards playing/training/participation)
 Behavioural element (e.g. persistence/ trying
hard, giving up, can be towards training/playing)

3. Explain how attitudes in sport
can be formed (4)
 Past experiences/previous matches/encounters
 Attributions, internal attributions to past
success/failure
 Learned helplessness/reinforced failure
 Significant others,
reinforcement/imitating/social learning
 Socialisation, norms of your culture/community
 Media, religion
 Personality characteristics

4. Identifying a typical undesirable prejudice
that might be found in sport and explain
how such an attitude might be changed
(4)
 Racism/ageism/sexism/homophobia (1)
 Cognitive dissonance may change
attitudes/change one element of triadic model
to gain consonance
 Use significant others/persuasive
communication
 Influence behaviour directly, (praise for non-
prejudice behaviour negative reinforcement for
prejudice behaviour)
 Influence beliefs/ cognitive aspect
 Influence emotions/ affective aspect

5. A sports performer can be affected
by the presence of the crowd or
audience
 Using psychological theories and practical examples,
explain possible positive and negative effects of an
audience on sports performance (6)
Level 1-2
 Don’t use psychological theories effectively and is merely
descriptive about positive and/or negative effects.
Level 3-4
 Explains 1 theory. Top end – both positive/negative effects
are explained and practical examples offered.
Level 5-6
 2 theories fully explained, Top end – both positive/negative
effects are explained and practical examples offered.

6.  Drive theory, arousal/drive/anxiety increased
 (Drive theory/dominant response/Zajonc’s theory)
dominant response/ habit more likely to occur/ learned
responses automatic/ motor programmes are run
 Weaker players, incorrect dominant responses
 Good performances from well
learned/stronger/elite/correct dominant responses.
 (RAS, personality theory) extroverts likely to perform
better with an audience,
 Introverts likely to perform worse when audience present
 Homefield advantage/disadvantage
 (proximity theory) how close audience are
 (cue utilisation) distractions/ wider attentional focus
 (Nideffer/attentional control) attention narrows for those
use to audience

7. Describe strategies that may be used
to combat the effects of social
inhibition (4)
 Use of selective attention/concentration/focus on cues
 Mental rehearsal/practice/imagery/visualisation
 Positive self talk/positive thinking/negative thought-
stopping
 Practise with audience in training
 Learn skills thoroughly/develop motor programmes
 Decrease importance of event/reduce perceived
accountability
 Increase self confidence/self efficacy
 Knowing zone of optimum functioning
 Social support/encouragement from others/positive
reinforcement

8. Psychology: January 2006

9. The personality of a performer has often been
related to sports performance although
research is contradictory
 Outline the trait and interactionist approaches to
personality and sport (3)
Trait
 Born with/innate/genetically determined
 Traits are behaviours that are pre-determined rather than
learned
 Enduring/stable/predictable
Interactionist
 Traits triggered by environmental/situational factors
 B = f(PE)/behaviour is the result of personality traits and
the environment interacting/combination of trait and
social learning

10. Giving examples from sport, explain
the view that we develop our
personalities by imitating others (4)
 Social learning theory
 Reactions from others reinforce behaviour
 Others must be significant to us/role models
whose behaviour is deemed to be acceptable
 Others behaviour may be copied because the
reinforcement comes from a third party who is
significant others e.g. coach
 Bandura’s experiment showed aggressive
behaviour is imitated if model is significant
 Socialisation

11. Good leadership has been
recognised as important for
effective team play in sport
Identify three characteristics of an effective
leader in sport (3)
 Good communication skills
 Highly motivated/enthusiastic/ambitious
 Clear goal/vision/good decision making skills/ good
perceptual skills
 Empathy/gets on well with team mates
 Good at sports themselves
 Good knowledge of sport
 Charismatic
 Adaptable

12. Using Fiedler’s contingency model of
leadership, explain when you might use the task
style and the person orientated style of
leadership in sport. (5)
 Model identifies leadership characteristics/styles
interact with the
situation/interactionist/situational approach
 The effectiveness of these styles depends upon the
favourableness of the situation
 Favourableness depends on the relationship
between the leader and group members
 Favourableness depends on the structure of the
task/task difficulty
 Favourableness depends on the leader’s
perceived power/authority

13. Weiner’s model in table 1, shows the reasons
that team members gave for losing. Explain
how you would use attribution retraining to
promote mastery orientation and avoid learned
helplessness (6)
Stable:
Lost because we
have low ability as
players
Stable:
Lost because the
opposition were to
good for us
Unstable:
Lost because we
did not try hard
enough
Unstable:
Lost because the
referees decisions
were poor

14. Mastery orientation
 Learned helplessness is the belief that failure is inevitable/failure has
been reinforced
 Mastery orientation is having high self confidence/positive
outlook/need to achieve
 Attributional retraining is changing/helping to change the reasons to
maximise motivation
 Attribute success to internal factors/increase confidence
 Attribute success to stable factors/increase belief of future success
 Attribute success to controllable factors
Learned helplessness
 Attribute failure to external factors/maintains confidence
 Attribute failure to unstable factors/increase belief of future success
 Attribute failure to controllable factors/maintains motivation
 Set realistic targets/process/performance goals