Attitudes

Attitudes Summary

Triadic Model

Cognitive component: what we know & believe about the attitude object.

Affective component: how we feel about the attitude objective

Behavioural component:  how we actually behave towards, respond to, or intend to respond to the attitude object

Attitudes are entirely learned from modelling usually at an early age from parents, peers, teachers, role models and other influences in society.  This is called socialisation.  As we grow attitudes are conditioned by experience and familiarity with the attitude object.

bad attiude progression

sterotype 
prejudice
discrimination



Changing attitudes
2 methods: persuasive communication

Receiver must attend, understand and retain the message

Persuader: expert/ trusted role model
message: clear and balance between emotion and logic
receiver: must be willing to listen
situation can affect the attitude (others present)


Cognitive dissonance 

the creation of conflicting feelings to change a attitude

cognitive: change knowledge of object

Affective: engineer situation where object is more favourable to person

Behavioural: use rewards and incentives

Measuring attitudes

Observation of behavioural signals:

Viewing of the manifestations of an individual becoming overly aroused, including changes in HR & body language; such as standing tall or making eye contact.

Questionnaires:

More common method often form of attitude scale that attempts to give an indication of an idividual's attitudes to a range of objects by asking them to respond to a set of statements. 

Others describe how participants feel.

Eg

Thurstone scale  (Do you like?)

Likert scale (how much do you like?)

Semantic differential scale (what do you like more?)

Attributions

Attributions  Summary

Weiner's Attribution Theory

Attributions "the process of ascribing reasons for, or causes to events and behaviours".

Two main dimensions:
Locus of Causality

• Internal 
• External

Locus of Stability

• stable
• unstable 

4 catergories 

Internal stable                  ability

Internal unstable              effort

external stable                 luck

external unstable             task difficulty

Learned Helplessness

a vicious circle

failure attributed to ability/success attributed to luck

lowers confidence

leeds to poor performance 

more likely to fail again 

can be specific or global

Attribution Retraining

2 methods:

1. make controllable (internal/unstable) attributions towards success, eg you control your own success, if you fail there is something you can do about it.
2. Self serving bias the use of attributions to protect self- confidence: success to internal and failure to external.

Self serving bias should be used rarely as it can lead to excuses. 

Achievement Motivation

Achievement Motivation Summary

McClelland - Atkinson Model

Need to achieve (Nach):
The motivation to succeed in a performance, driven by the feelings of pride/satisfaction you receive when winning.
High Nach:

• show approach behaviours
• seeks out challenges concerned with standards of performance - will do extra training 
• enjoyment in performing in evaluated situations
• attributes performance to internal factors 
• attributes failure to external factors
• values feedback

Need to avoid failure (Naf):

The motivation to avoid failing, driven by fear of humiliation and shame. 

High Naf:

• shows avoidance behaviours 
• aviods challenges
• would rather not compete unless there was a certain chance of victory or against a far better opponent
• attributes performance to external factors 
• attributes failure with internal factors 
• does not value feedback as it is viewed as criticism. 

How a coach can promote "approach behaviour":

• Positive experiences
• gradually increase task difficulty
• goal setting 
• use positive feedback and praise/ support from significant others
• reduce punishment
• use attributions correctly
• develop high levels of self-efficacy

Situational factors 

Probability of success  (task difficulty)

Incentive value of success ( how rewarding success is to the performer)

These two factors are inversely proportional

Personality

Personality Summary

Trait Theory: B=F(P)

• Personality is made up of genetically inherent traits.
• These traits are stable and enduring.
• They imply consistent and predictable behavior.

Five factor personality model:

1. Extroversion
2. Agreeableness
3. Conscientiousness (will)
4. Neurosis 
5. Openness

Examples: 

• Girdano's Narrow Band theory type A & type B personalities
• Cattell's 16 Personality Factors
• Eysenck's Trait theory (2 dimensional)

Bandura's Social Learning Theory: B=F(E)

The suggestion that environment shapes personality 

We learn our behavior through our experiences and by modeling and reinforcement

A child will model a certain behaviour, after this if they are punished they will likely not repeat he action but if the child is reinforced  positively or negatively they are likely to repeat the action.  

Examples:

Standford Prison experiment

Bobo Doll experiment

Interactionist Theory: B=F(PE)

A combination of the two previous theories. 

Behavior will remain stable within the same environment but will change as the environment changes

Hollander's Structure of Personality

3 levels more permeable away from the center

Psychological Core

The "real you" a persons basic attitudes motives values and morals very hard to change

Typical response 

the usual manner of response to environmental situations indicates factors of the core

Role-related behaviour 

superficial - the behaviours which we adopt for different environmental situations. 

Personality tests 

advantages:

quick and simple indication as to basic parts of a persons personality

can be mass published

does not take long

is quite inexpensive

disadvantages:

not a precise view of personality in depth

can be inaccurate

people are likely to lie  

Welcome to the Sport Psychology A2+

This is a blog set up for anybody interested in sport psychology, and wants to know more. I am primarily writing this as revision for my A2 PE but to be honest I'll likely be continuing it through to Uni as well. 

Depending on the success of this I might set up other blogs for Physiology and Contemporary for A2, if I do I'll provide links accordingly. 

Hope this is helpful and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.