Sports Psychology: Does it help or hurt?
You’re down one in the fourth quarter with 20 seconds left on the game clock, everyone’s looking at you to make that final shot but suddenly all you can think about is your psychological test results: does not perform well under pressure. You take the shot…and miss.
Will the concept of sports psychology, meant to help players, really hurt them in the grand scheme of things? If professional sports teams are allowed to perform psychological tests on athletes before deciding to draft them, will it ultimately affect the chances of recruiting the player or not? Say an athlete is diagnosed with above-average anxiety through the Sport Competition Anxiety Test, despite being incredibly talented. Will a recruiter look at this test and worry that when the pressures on, the athlete will be unable to compete? Obviously, this is something professional teams want to look at when deciding to spend millions and millions of dollars on a player. However, it is possible to argue that these tests do not define someone’s character. An athlete can be diagnosed with severe anxiety but perhaps also be defined as mentally tough. No test can tell you which characteristic is stronger and which one will prevail when it counts.
Professional teams should also look at the consequences of putting athletes through this kind of psychological testing. The results could impact their performance and confidence. If a test tells an athlete, they perform poorly under pressure, then that athlete’s mindset could in fact be changed any time he/she is put into a situation with pressure. Consciously or subconsciously this test result could change the performance of an athlete whether it make them more cautious when in a certain type of situation, or more careless when trying to prove this diagnosis wrong.
After some review, there are some positives to using these tests. If the athletes tend to take constructive criticism well, and use these test results to their advantage, to improve their overall game, it is possible that these test results could benefit them. However, these tests should be considered after an athlete has been accepted into a contract, not before, to eliminate any biases that could be formed. Some of these tests could also be used to knock down mental blocks that they have had problems with in the past.
However, these ‘tests’ meant to reveal athlete’s strengths and weaknesses are not an accurate portrayal of the athlete themselves, and therefore, are not fair to use before an athlete is signed to a contract. Sports psychology does not define someone’s character, it should only be used to aid athletes, not to hold them back. So the next time you have the ball, 20 seconds to go, down by ones, you’ll have no mental block, you’ll take that shot…and score.
References:
http://www.sportspsychologybasketball.com/what-is-basketball-psychology/
