Introduction : Sport and Exercise Psychology - Theory and Application

Abstract

The introduction to this textbook gives an overview of the scientific field of the psychology of sport and exercise. It is explained that sport psychologists try to describe, explain, predict, and change human experience and behavior in the area of physical activity. We display how sport psychology is concerned with phenomena in competitive rule-governed physical activities, while exercise psychology rather deals with health-related physical activity. We further show how one and the same phenomenon can be viewed from different theoretical perspectives in each subdiscipline of sport psychology, including cognition, motivation, emotion, personality, development, and social psychology. The present textbook is further divided into a theoretical and a practical part. However, we emphasize that both theory and practice in sport psychology are intertwined and influence each other strongly. Finally, we give a selective overview on the history of sport psychology and organization and institutionalization of the scientific subject of sport psychology.