PSYC 3950 Sport Psychology
Lewis Barker Professor of Psychology Thach 223 barkele@auburn.eduCourse Description: An inquiry into the biological, personal, and social foundations of sport and spectator behavior, and how motivation, emotion, personality, and other mind/body variables influence athletic performance. Seminar class includes your pursuit of topics of interest to you, applied exercises in emotional expression, stress and pain management, and visualization and hypnosis.
Course Activities:
1. You will use and contribute to this website focused on Sport Psychology. When your completed web assignments are submitted and graded (see below), you will earn points for posting them on the website.
2. Pick a sport (or sport-related topic) that you are most interested in, and examine that particular sport (or sport-related topic) within a sport psychology framework (see main headings, below). Post on website.
3 . Select a sport-related book (a biography, a book on track, baseball, or women in sport are examples). Submit the title to me for approval, and then write a report on it as it relates to basic principles of sport psychology (see main headings, below). Post on website.
Objectives of this class:
• Understand what is (and what is not) sport, and the categories that help conceptualize sport, including individual and team sports, contact and non-contact sports, skilled (small muscle) and unskilled (large muscle) sports; mens and womens sports, level of competition (grade-school through pro).
• Understand why humans (and only humans?) engage in sport behavior
• Understand sex, gender, and individual differences in sport behavior from biological and psychological perspectives
• Understand sport and athletic performance as the integration of biological (physical),cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors
• Understand the various ways in which athletic performance is measured
• Understand sport and spectator behavior as social behaviors
• Understand personality variables in sport behavior
• Understand the role of pain in sport behavior, and what is meant by dissociation and mind-body integration as related to performance.
Course Organization:
I. What is sports behavior, and why do humans engage in it?
List of types, varieties of sport (in class)
Organizing the list (some categories: groups and individuals; gender issues; small muscle (skill) and large muscle (strength, speed, endurance); level of competition; spectators and competitors (in class)
II. Nature and nurture
Evolutionary considerations: Natural Selection
territoriality , in evolutionary times, and in sports competition; cooperation, in evolutionary times, and in sports; fields of war, and fields of competition; athletic fitness and evolutionary fitness; sport as sublimated aggression
Evolutionary considerations: Sexual Selection
Health and attraction; Culture and acculturation: social needs; group cohesiveness; gender issues
Environmental considerations: skills training, rearing conditions (aculturation); "10 years, 10,000 hours"; behavioral measures of performance
III. Psychological concepts in sport and performance: Evolutionary Psychology; Motivation and Emotion; Aggression; Personality; Social Psychology; Health Psychology
IV. Mind/body considerations in physiology and performance: pain, and pain control, visualization techniques, attention; focus; dissociation,stress management, mind-body interactions through dietary challenge, mind-body interactions through exercise challenge
IMPORTANT COURSE POLICIES:
Disability: Please notify the professor/GTA immediately if you are a student with a disability recognized by AU. We will see to it that any special arrangements that you may need are made as soon as possible.
Attendance: Attendance and classroom participation earn you points (see below). Failure to attend class can also affect your grade. If you have four unexcused absences, your final grade is decreased by one letter grade (for example, you have earned enough points for a grade of B, but because you have five unexcused absences, your final grade is a C). If you have eight unexcused absences, your final grade is an F, no matter how many points you have accumulated.
Web Assignments: You have 10 web assignments that should elaborate upon a single topic in Sport Psychology. E-mail your own work (minimum of 500 words), not something simply cut and pasted from another web site (this is called plagiarism, and is serious enough to lead to dismissal from the class). In most cases, if you are not writing original essays, your submitted work will include a reference or two (a website, an article or book) as a basis for what your are writing about. Use APA style for references.
Submitting Assignments to Web: Submit your web postings by writing in the subject line of the e-mail addressed to barkele@auburn.edu your codename and assignment number. (For example, if your codename is "Quigley" and you are e-mailing your 3rd web assignment, the subject line of the e-mail would read "Quigley 3". Attach your assignments as Word documents labelled the same - with your codename and the posting number (for example: "Quigley 3").
Book Report: Select a sport-related book (a biography, a book on track, baseball, women or children in sport are examples). Submit the title to me for approval, and then write a report on it as it relates to basic principles of sport psychology. The book report should be a minimum of 750 words. Use APA style to write the report.
Make-up Policies:
• Make-ups for the full value of the activity will be given only when these activities are missed due to sudden illness, accidents, family emergencies and other legitimate university excuses.
• Regardless of the nature of your legitimate excuse, you must, when possible, notify the instructor in advance by calling or through e-mail. (Reminder: all e-mail is time dated.) Official AU excuses and doctor's excuses are accepted as legitimate justification for missing a class.
• Make-ups given for students who miss an activity due to illegitimate excuses will automatically lose 15% of the original value of that activity.
• All make-ups will be given during times arranged by the TA. Failure to make up missed work during these times will result in forfeiture of your opportunity to do so.
Academic Honesty : Students are expected to behave with integrity. Students who do not comply with AU's academic honor code will be dealt with in the manner specified in the Tiger Cub.
How to earn points:
• Attendance and participation in class discussions, announced quizzes, and take-home assignments (50 points)
• Your web research, and 10 website contributions (2 per week for five weeks;10 possible points per contribution =100 total points possible)
• Read a book and write a 1000 word report that shows the book's relationship to topics in psychology (50 points).
• A mid-term over lectures and readings; identification and short-answer essay questions (50 points).
• Final comprehensive exam (50 points)
• Class attendance and participation (extra credit)
COURSE GRADING :
Activity Points
Classroom participation 50
Contributions to Website 100
Mid-term 50
Book Report 50
Final Examination 50
Total Possible Points = 300
An attendance bonus of 10 points can be earned if you have no more than 3 absences. To earn this bonus, you may not miss more than 3 classes for any reason.
GRADE POINTS NEEDED
A (90%) x 300 = 270
B (80%) 240
C (70%) 210
D (60%) 180
F (below 60%) < 180
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Last updated on Aug 1, 2006