Self-confidence and sports performance
Year: 2001
Type: article
Abstract: Female and male athletes often crate a relationship between their performance and their actual self-confidence. Poor performances are explained with a lack of self-confidence and good performances with strong self-confidence. The purpose of this presentation is to elaborate the validity of these common sense explanations based on a literature review. First, we describe the postulates of self-efficacy theory (Ban-dura, 1977, 1986, 1997), which is the most extensively used theory for investigating the relation of self-confidence to sport (or motor) performance. Second, we report some empirical findings and suggest some directions for future research. Self-Efficacy Theory Self-efficacy theory, developed within the framework of a social cognitice theory (Bandura, 1986), poses self-efficacy as a common cognitive mechanism for mediating people’s motivation and behavior. Bandura originally proposed the theory to account for the different results achieved by the diverse meth-ods used in clinical psychology for treating anxiety. Self-efficacy is defined as "...beliefs in one’s capabi-lities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments " (Bandura, 1997, 3). Thus, self-efficacy is not concerned with the skills an individual has but with the judgments of what an individual can do with the skills he or she possesses and therefore can be considered as a situation-speci-
Author: Andreas Bund
Institution: University of Luxembourg
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1569187274