Many of the societies which have problems of multicultural governance are former multi ethnic colonies. A theory of such colonial and postcolonial societies draws particularly on the work of J. S. Furnivall and M. G. Smith. According to Furnivall, different ethnic groups in a plural society meet only in the marketplace. This marketplace, however, lacks
The term pogrom came into widespread use in Russia in the late nineteenth century. Origin ally it defined an organized massacre for the destruction or annihilation of any group of people. Since 1905-6, in the English speaking world, it evolved into a term chiefly used to describe any riots directed against Jews in the modern
In a world characterized by massive immigration and high rates of intermarriage, it was inevitable that a new type of ethnicity, polyethnicity, would emerge. Whereas ethnicity is commonly understood to reflect the shared ancestry and history of a people, polyethnicity in this context refers to the ability and willingness of individuals to identify with multiple
Prejudice is the judging of a person or idea, without prior knowledge of the person or idea, on the basis of some perceived group membership. Prejudice can be negative, as in the case of racist or sexist ideology, or positive, as in the case of a preference for a particular ethnic food, and can thus
Race and ethnic consciousness refers to the awareness of membership in a racial or ethnic group by both group members and the larger society in which they reside. The concept embodies both popular and social scientific under standings of classification and membership. Popular perceptions often attribute race and ethnicity to biological origins. In contrast, social
Forms of etiquette exist in nearly every society where different racial and ethnic groups are separated by extreme differences in economic wealth, political power, or social status. They are most developed in caste or caste like societies, in which the lower status racial or ethnic groups are enslaved or belong to economically exploited or subjugated
The term racism widely entered the social science vocabulary in the 1930s, as part of the Boasian reaction against the social Darwinism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ruth Benedict, a student of Franz Boas, was one of the prominent early users. By the 1950s and 1960s, a broad consensus developed as to
Following the September 11, 2001 massive attacks on the United States, the issue of political terrorism has assumed a priority stance in the political agenda of several countries. Once fairly disregarded by scholarly research and analysis, the phenomenon has gained wide attention since the events of that day and those that took place in Iraq
Mediatization of politics is a complex process that is closely linked to the presence of a media logic in society and in the political sphere. It is distinguished from the idea of “mediation,” a natural, preordained mission of mass media to convey meaning from communicators to their target audiences. To define politics as “mediated” is
Negative campaigning is a widespread technique, using the method of comparison and attack. It does not focus on one’s own strengths, but rather on the alleged weaknesses of one’s political opponent. The attacks can be directed at the platform of the political opponent or at his or her personality. Whenever the attacks aim at personal
“News as discourse” marks a theoretical framework for the analysis of news. News is considered as a complex communicative event – as discourse – including the social context of news reports. Rather than exclusively focusing on text properties such as the thematic structure of news reports, the actors, and the opinions addressed in the reports
Political parties are groups that organize to gain political office, control the governing process, mobilize majorities, organize dissent and opposition, and socialize voters. In democratic political systems parties have emerged as the natural evolution of like-minded interests organizing for political influence. Election campaigns are one major battleground on which political parties compete for influence through
Colin Seymour-Ure (1974) was the first scholar to speak of a “parallelism” between parties and newspapers. In his view this refers to three main features: the ownership of the mass media by political parties, the editorial choices of the news organizations, and the party affiliation of the readers. Jay Blumler and Michael Gurevitch (1995) further
Election campaigning is considered to be personalized if it focuses on the top candidates and their personal qualities more than on political issues. The personalization of campaigning is part of the personalization of politics as a whole. Moreover, the personalization of voting behavior and that of media coverage play an important role (Brettschneider 2002). Yet
Politainment refers to the blending of politics and entertainment into a new type of political communication. The portmanteau word is composed of “politics” and “entertainment,” analogously to the term infotainment. As well as infotainment, which is used as a label for a specific television program type, the term “politainment” denotes, in a broader sense, the
Political advertising is a form of political communication that uses the mass media to promote political candidates, parties, policy issues, and/or ideas. Advertising messages are generally controlled messages allowing for direct communication with the public and voters without interpretation or filtering by news media or other sources. In the United States, where political advertising is
“Political cognitions” refers to the ability of human beings to acquire and possess political knowledge through perception, reasoning, or intuition. Citizens’ cognitions about politics come mainly from information supplied by the mass media – television, newspapers, magazines, or the Internet – because most political happenings are beyond the day-to-day experiences of citizens. Dependence on mass
Definitions and Concepts The Latin root of “communication” – communicare – means “to share” or “to be in relation with.” Through Indo-European etymological roots, it further relates to the words “common,” “commune,” and “community,” suggesting an act of “bringing together”. The notion of communication has been present and debated in the west from pre-Socratic times.
The field of communication is highly diverse in methods, theories, and objects of study. What, if anything, unites the field as a coherent entity? What warrants bringing together such an apparently eclectic group of topics and approaches in a single reference work? Presumably, the common focus is on “communication.” But what is the nature of
Development communication refers to a process of strategic intervention toward social change, initiated and engaged by organizations and communities. Development itself encompasses participatory and intentional strategies designed to benefit the public good, whether in terms of material, political, or social needs. While the more broadly defined field of development communication incorporates mediated as well as
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, communication scholars began to adopt a perspective that recognizes the dynamic and evolving nature of behavior. Termed “developmental” or “life-span” communication, this approach mirrors its sister disciplines, psychology and sociology, in the study of change across time. Communication scholars became interested in this perspective after the
Educational communication is an umbrella term that encompasses all speaking, listening, and relational constructs and concepts that relate to learning. In the past, researchers have been interested in characteristics of teachers that enhance or hinder learning; student characteristics that increase or inhibit learning; teaching strategies that augment learning; how best to give criticism of student
“Exposure to communication content” describes one of the most recent areas of specialization within the communication discipline. It is located at the intersection of media effects research and audience research, two academic traditions that have remained relatively separate. Over the past half a century, the well-established tradition of media effects research has revealed a rather
Feminist and gender studies represent key fields of research within communication studies today. It is difficult to discuss their emergence and developments as two separate entities, as the two often overlap. However, it can be noted that mainstream forms of gender studies research tend to differ from feminist studies politically, theoretically, and methodologically. As Dow
Health communication is the study and application of the generation, creation, and dissemination of health-related information, health-related interactions among individual social actors and institutions, and their effects on different publics including individuals, community groups, and institutions. The challenges inherent in disease prevention and health promotion warrant a multidisciplinary and multilevel approach that examines the role
Information processing is an approach to the study of behavior which seeks to explain what people think, say, and do by describing the mental systems that give rise to those phenomena. At the heart of the information-processing perspective is the conception of the mind as a representational system. That is, the mind is viewed as
Social groups, such as adolescents, police, and ethnic groups, very often have their own distinctive cultures that include such ingredients as specialized foods and utensils, customs and rituals, dress styles, art, music, dance, rituals, literature, and so forth, while other intergroup situations (e.g., artificially constructed laboratory groups) constitute social categories that cannot claim such cultural
Law, Public Safety, and Security Career Cluster You’ve probably seen people who drive as if there were no speed limits or stop signs. They zoom down the road, oblivious of others and hoping for the best. What if there really were no traffic laws like stopping at stop signs or driving slower on a curvy
The manufacturing cluster contains jobs that involve turning raw materials into final products that are sold to buyers. Manufacturing work refers not only to the people who make the products, but the many people in management, engineering, design, and other areas. Manufacturing workers come up with product ideas, test products to make sure they are
Marketing is anticipating what customers need, and then directing goods and services— and information about those goods and services—from producer to customer to satisfy those needs. Marketers work with advertising professionals to determine how ads should look, where they should be placed, and when the advertising should begin. Marketing and advertising employees research and develop
The jobs in this cluster deal with the safe and efficient movement of people and goods from one place to another. This can entail delivering packages via a shipment service such as UPS or FedEx, planning the distribution of a business’s products from its warehouses to stores and customers, or driving a taxi around busy
The agriculture cluster is large and diverse, with careers ranging from the farm to the laboratory to the corporate office. This industry is made up of the farmers who cultivate the land, raise livestock, and grow plants; the businesses that purchase, process, distribute, and transport farm products and farm supplies; and the organizations that supply
Architecture and construction is a complex cluster that deals with all aspects of planning, building, and maintaining a structure, whether it is a skyscraper or a highway. Jobs in this field range from designing an entire community to installing security and fire alarms in individual buildings. In addition to the planning and building of structures
For centuries people have sought to improve methods of communication. Through means as varied as dance, writing, and broadcasting, our basic need to communicate keeps us entertained, informed, and connected to one another and the world around us. Although the field of arts, audio-video technology, and communication offers career opportunities that range from playwright to
Learning is a lifelong experience. From the moment we are born, we begin to learn ways to communicate with others to fulfill basic needs for food, warmth, and attention. Through our early interactions with our families, we begin to learn what works (a baby will cry when it needs food), what does not (a toddler’s
The health science field has become one of the largest of the career clusters. Approximately 14 million people were employed in some aspect of the U.S. health care system in 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Health care workers are employed as physicians, nurses, nursing aides, technicians, technologists, therapists, and in a host
The human services career cluster contains jobs that deal with families and human needs. Human services workers help people manage the many mental, emotional, and practical demands of everyday life, such as finding a home, securing child care, deciding on a career, or arranging funeral services for loved ones. They also help people deal with
Anthropology engages history not as one but instead as many things: (1) sociocultural change or diachrony; (2) a domain of events and objects that make manifest systems of signification, purpose, and value; (3) a domain of variable modalities of the experience and consciousness of being in time; and (4) a domain of practices, methods, and
As soon as fundamental principles of genetic inheritance were clearly established in the early twentieth century, anthropologists began using these principles and new empirical data to illuminate long-standing problems of human variation and primate phylogeny. Initially focusing on human blood characteristics, geneticists quantified regional differences in ABO genotype, and tried to correlate these differences with
The word aborigine means “from the beginning.” In Australia, this word began to be used to refer specifically to the continent’s nearly one million indigenous inhabitants at the time of the British invasion in 1788. Many cultures have been lost since then, due to violent conflict between Aborigines and successive waves of new settlers. Some
The Acheulean stone tool “culture” refers to the suite of typological characteristics associated with the stone tool technology of the later part of the Lower Paleolithic or Early Stone Age. In terms of stone tool culture chronology, the Acheulean culture immediately follows the Oldowan culture in Africa, and contemporary industries that possibly existed elsewhere in
The word acropolis literally means the higher, fortified part of a city. While there may be many of these in Greece, when we speak of the Acropolis, most understand the reference to be to the Acropolis of Athens. The Acropolis sits more than 500 feet above the plain of Attica in the city of Athens
Action anthropology is a scholarly enterprise based in field research, data collection, and theory building, during which the anthropologist is also committed to assisting local communities in achieving their goals and meeting specific felt needs. Rather than pursuing pure science or perusing their own agendas, action anthropologists see themselves more as tentative coexplorers who help
Adaptation has a diversity of meanings, even within areas in which it is widely used, such as anthropology, biology, the humanities, and in common parlance. The study of adaptations is a central activity in biology, where interpretations of the concept have received much scrutiny in recent years, for example, in the articles and monographs of
Cultural adaptation is a relatively new concept used to define the specific capacity of human beings and human societies to overcome changes of their natural and social environment by modifications to their culture. The scale of culture changes depends on the extent of habitat changes and could vary from slight modifications in livelihood systems (productive
Aesthetics is the area of philosophy that studies the nature of beauty and art. Aesthetic appreciation, then, is the admiration of beauty, such as valuing the fine arts of music, literature, dance, and visual art. What is considered beautiful and even what is considered art are not always agreed upon by everyone in the same
Just as with many phrases, affirmative action can mean different things to different people. Not only do we find a difference in definition, but we find a difference among people in how they view it. Perhaps an individual’s view of affirmative action is sometimes affected by how it personally affects that person or someone close
Introduction Physicians are often blamed for the high cost of healthcare in the US. Physicians dupe patients into consuming too much care, the story goes, driving up costs without producing commensurate gains in health. This line of reasoning derives from the physician-induced demand (PID) hypothesis, which is a long-debated topic in health economics. Under the
Introduction Many perspectives can be taken to look at physician practice behaviors. Other articles in this section of the site and in the literature (e.g., by McGuire, Chandra, Cutler, and Song) provide extensive information on multiple approaches to studying physician practice. In general, empirical studies of physician practice behaviors build on administrative data which contain
Introduction In health insurance, cost-sharing refers to payments that a patient makes directly (i.e., out of pocket) for medical services. Cost-sharing includes a deductible, which is the amount of money a patient pays for services before their health insurance coverage begins, copayments, which are flat payments made for particular products or services (e.g., $15 for
Introduction The defining feature of health care markets and the economics of the health care sector is information structure. Kenneth Arrow, in his seminal paper, demonstrates the role that ‘missing markets’ for information play in explaining the existence of the features of health care that distinguish it from other industries and markets (Arrow, 1963). Information
Introduction In the presence of health insurance and limited capacity, an excess demand for services remains a permanent feature of several publicly funded health systems. The demand for health care needs therefore to be rationed in one way or another. This article describes three different common types of demand rationing. It distinguishes between (1) direct
Overview Advertising is ubiquitous, found on television and radio, newspapers and magazines, mail and flyers on the windshield, billboards and sports arenas, and now on the computer, and virtually no one is immune to being exposed to it. The American Marketing Association defines marketing, of which advertising is a subset, as ‘‘the activity, set of
Introduction What do economists add to the multidisciplinary discussion of addiction? In this article, economic theories of addiction, statistical evidence produced by economists on addictive behaviors, and resulting policy implications are described. The manner in which economists approach addictive behaviors differs in some ways from the approaches of other disciplines. Medical and public health research
Introduction Induced abortion is not an obvious topic in a section on health economics. Although being a common procedure, abortion does not contribute to rising medical expenditures or inflation. There were 1.1 million surgical abortions in the US in 2008, but the number of abortions has fallen overtime, although the inflation-adjusted cost of a first
/ Health at Advanced Ages Introduction This article examines how health and mortality at advanced ages evolves from conditions early in life. Here, the authors summarize the findings, examine econometric strategies to identify causal effects, and discuss the implications of the findings for public policies aimed at improving population health. The larger part of health
Introduction Alcohol is extremely prevalent in contemporary society. According to the World Health Organization, in 2005 the per capita alcohol consumption totaled 6.13 l of pure alcohol for every person age 15 and older worldwide. More than a quarter of this consumption is estimated to be from illegal or homemade production and thus not likely
Hypersegregation occurs when a race/ethnic group is highly segregated in multiple ways, no matter how segregation is conceptualized or measured. It is an explicit recognition of the fact that residential segregation by race is a complex phenomenon that is multidimensional in nature. First used in 1989 in an article by Massey and Denton about patterns
Throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars and policymakers predicted the disappearance of Native Americans and indigenous peoples in general (see Dippie 1982 for many examples). Global patterns of urbanization, industrialization, and resource extraction indeed have led to a reduction in the number of indigenous people living traditional lifestyles on ancestral lands. However
Interracial unions refer to romantic relationships between people of different racial categories. Generally, the term indicates married (and hence, heterosexual) status, as it is more feasible to identify and carry out social research on this population than non married, non-cohabiting, and/or same sex interracial couples. Sociological inquiry of racial intermarriage stems from the study of
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was not only an internationally renowned civil rights leader, but was also a public sociologist par excellence. King was born into a family and local community of socially involved ministers, deeply dedicated to issues of racial justice, in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, located
Manifest destiny refers to a belief and a sustained racial and imperialist project that the Christian God ordained United States settlers and land speculators to occupy the entire North American continent and claim territorial, political, and economic sovereignty over its people and resources. Articulations of this belief and project were prevalent yet widely contested in
The concept of marginality was first introduced by Robert Park (1928) and explained, almost as a minor theme, in Park’s analysis of the causes and consequences of human migrations. In his article, Park referred to a ”new type of personality” which was emerging out of rapid human migratory patterns during the end of the nineteenth
American society has long resisted the idea of creating a truly egalitarian society. This was first noted in the early nineteenth century in one of the earliest comprehensive studies of the United States when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that America’s ability and willingness to confront its racial and color divide would deter mine its very
Minzoku is a Japanese word meaning an ethnic group, a nation, a race, or even a combination of all these. A Japanese dictionary defines minzoku as ”(1) a social group sharing many common characteristics in race, language, culture, religion, etc.; (2) a social group sharing a territory, an economy and a fate and forming a
Women of color have always actively participated in women’s issues. However, their experience with feminist work has often been overlooked and largely undocumented (Hurtado 1996). Multiracial feminism refers to the activist and scholarly work conducted by women of color and anti racist white allies to promote race, class, and gender equality. In comparison to the
The Japanese term nihonjinron refers to discourses on the distinctiveness of the society, culture, and national character of the Japanese. As such, nihonjinron have manifested themselves periodically from the Meiji era (1868-1911) to the present, while continually undergoing changes in form. In its narrower and most recent sense, the term refers to the vogue of
/ Accreditation of Public Health Programs Accreditation is widely used in higher education in the United States as a nongovernmental means to evaluate colleges and universities and to evaluate and attest to the quality of an individual educational program that prepares students for entry into a recognized profession. Regional accrediting bodies, whose membership is made
/ Certification of Public Health Workers Since public health has such a broad scope, public health workers need many different skills. Most public health workers, however, have not been trained to deal with the problems they will face in the twenty-first century. The types of knowledge needed for the practice of public health include: 1)
/ Council on Education for Public Health The Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) is the recognized accrediting body for graduate schools of public health and graduate public health programs in U.S. institutions of higher education. Established in 1974 as an independent not-for-profit corporation, the council assumed the accreditation function from the American Public
/ Public Health Leadership Leadership is the process through which an individual tries to influence another individual or a group of individuals to accomplish a goal. Leadership is valued in our culture, especially when it helps to achieve goals that are beneficial to the population, such as the enactment of effective preventive health policies. An
Public health nursing is a specialized form of registered nursing that combines nursing and public health principles. According to the American Public Health Association, the primary focus of public health nursing is improving the health of the community as a whole rather than just that of an individual or family. Public health nursing is sometimes
Preparation for a career in public health usually requires formal training at the graduate level, typically resulting in a Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) degree. Career options for a person with an M.P.H. are varied, and there are many types of organizations that employ public health professionals. Historically, these have included mainly federal, state, and
The term collective purchasing is often used interchangeably with cooperative purchasing, group purchasing and collaborative purchasing and sundry other expressions. A fuller list of terms is set out by Schotanus and Telgen (2007) and Tella and Virolainen (2005) who provide a useful starting point for investigating the wider use of these arrangements. There are a
Introduction The typical analysis of health insurance and service use considers coverage for a single aggregate commodity, ‘health care.’ It is natural to extend the analysis to more than one service, raising a number of issues in health insurance design. Fundamentally, two covered services can be substitutes or complements. ‘Offset effects,’ a term common in
Sociology is a form of social inquiry that takes wide ranging forms. As is the case with many disciplines, it is contested and there is no generally accepted definition of what constitutes sociology. But we should not draw the conclusion that the contested and diverse nature of sociology amounts to the absence of any sense
Economic sociology constitutes its own distinct subfield in sociology and can be briefly defined as the sociological analysis of economic phenomena. Economic sociology has a rich intellectual tradition and traces its roots to the founding fathers of sociology, especially to Max Weber and his Economy and Society (see Swedberg 1998). It should be noted that
Environmental sociology is a relatively new area of inquiry that emerged largely in response to increased societal recognition of the seriousness of environmental problems. Many areas of sociology have similarly arisen as a result of societal attention to problematic conditions, including poverty and inequality, racial and gender discrimination, and crime and delinquency. Environmental sociology is
Discussions of media in sociology are generally concerned with mass media and, more recently, new media. Mass media are defined as communication systems by which centralized providers use industrialized technologies to reach large and geographically scattered audiences, distributing content broadly classified as information and entertainment. Media reaching mass populations emerged in the late nineteenth century
Medical sociology is a subdiscipline of sociology that studies the social causes and consequences of health and illness (Cockerham 2004). Major areas of investigation include the social aspects of health and disease, the social behavior of health care workers and the people who utilize their services, the social functions of health organizations and institutions, the
Political sociology analyzes the operation of power in social life, examining the distribution and machination of power at all levels: individual, organizational, communal, national, and international. Defined thus, political science becomes a subfield of sociology. Parsons (1951), for example, treated the political as one of the four principal domains of sociological analysis. In practice, however
The sociology of aging is both broad and deep. The breadth of the field can be highlighted in several ways. First, the sociology of aging encompasses investigations of aging as a process, of older adults as a group, and of old age as a distinctive stage of the life course. Second, aging research is performed
The sociology of crime (criminology) is the study of the making, breaking, and enforcing of criminal laws. Its aim is to understand empirically and to develop and test theories explaining criminal behavior, the formation and enforcement of laws, and the operation of criminal justice system. Outline What Is The Nature Of Crime? How Is Crime
In sociology deviance is defined as the violation of a social norm which is likely to result in censure or punishment for the violator. Behind this seemingly simple and clear cut definition, however, lurks a swarming host of controversies. A perusal of course curricula verifies that most sociologists who teach a course on deviance divide
The field of sociology offers a great multitude of interesting essay and research paper topics. This list of sociology topics for essay and research paper writing has been constructed to assist students who wish to explore a number of ideas in the field of sociology and social sciences. Sociology is a form of social inquiry that takes
The term affirmative action encompasses a broad range of voluntary and mandated policies and procedures intended to provide equal access to educational and employment opportunities for members of historically excluded groups. Foremost among the bases for historical exclusion have been race, ethnicity, and sex, although consideration is sometimes extended to other groups (e.g., Vietnam veterans
Affirmative action is a term applied to policies designed to redress inequalities created by historical legacies of racial, ethnic, and other types of group discrimination and disadvantage. Such policies have also been called affirmative discrimination, usually by those opposed to such measures, or positive discrimination, by proponents of these strategies. Like most social action aimed
Affirmative action is generally a policy to give preferential treatment to minority groups (such as women, ethnic minorities, indigenous people, and handicapped persons) who are socially vulnerable and face structural discrimination in a society through the use of measures such as quota systems to provide for equality in employment, education, and so forth. In some
In 1944 the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal published a monumental study on the social conditions of African Americans. Encyclopedic in its effort to cover all aspects of black life, An American Dilemma was a volume of over 1,000 pages that included analyses of major demographic, political, economic, and cultural forces that shaped the black experience
As a nation founded by European immigrants, the United States had to grapple with the concept of what it means to be an American. In seeking to become American, many immigrants adopted one model of assimilation, Anglo-conformity. This model promoted subordination of immigrant cultural values and customs to American holidays, civic rituals, and the English
Apartheid is a uniquely South African policy of racial engineering with which European colonizers tried to ensure their supremacy between 1948 and 1994. Invented by the Afrikaner section of the minority white population, it also aimed at advancing exclusive Afrikaner nationalism. Prior to the institutionalized racialism, Anglo type informal segregation had achieved similar effects, although
An alliance is ‘‘a close association for a common objective’’ or ‘‘for mutual benefit,’’ synonymous with the idea of a league, a confederacy, or a union (Friend & Guralnik 1960). One will find research on alliances between business organizations and between clients and therapists in psychotherapy. Here the focus is on alliances in social movements.
The authoritarian personality is a psychological syndrome of traits that correlates highly without group prejudice. Three personality traits in particular characterize the syndrome: deference to authorities, aggression toward out groups, and rigid adherence to cultural conventions. Thus, authoritarians hold a rigidly hierarchical view of the world. Nazi Germany inspired the first conceptualizations. The Frankfurt School
The term balkanization has come to mean a process of dividing an area, a country, or a region into several small hostile units. It was first coined by the New York Times in the aftermath of World War I to denote the disbanding of the Habsburg Empire into small, antagonistic states. The name is derived
Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve (1994) is one of the most controversial and widely debated works of social science in the second half of the twentieth century. Almost instantly upon publication, the book set off a firestorm that took years to die down. What were the authors saying that was so incendiary? Their main
Bilingualism is succinctly defined by Uriel Weinreich in his book Languages in Contact (1953) as the ability to alternatively use two languages. He defined the person involved in using two languages as bilingual. Bilingualism is common throughout the world and results from various language contact situations including: (1) colonization – colonizer imposition of a language
Biracialism is used to indicate a racial ancestry comprised of two ‘‘races.’’ The term generally refers to first generation persons of ‘‘mixed race’’ heritage, i.e., individuals who have parents of socially defined, distinct racial groups. Biracialism is sometimes used interchangeably with multiraciality or ‘‘mixed race.’’ Social scientists are concerned with the myriad meanings of biracialism
The study of ethnic and racial boundaries is intimately connected to the constructivist view on race and ethnicity. Rather than individual ethnic or racial ‘‘groups,’’ their history, culture, and social organization, the boundaries between such groups and the mechanisms of their production and transformation move to the foreground. This implies a shift away from concerns
In 1903, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois penned the phrase: ‘‘The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line – the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea’’ (Du Bois 1994 [1903]: 9). This thunderous statement
Racial/ethnic conflict is a basic process in social life and can be both destructive and cohesive. In some situations, it can be destructive for some groups and act as a cohesive force for others. Racial and ethnic groups may be the source and the result of the two faces of social conflict, acting as a
The topic of African Americans and consumption is fundamentally engaged with slavery, US racial politics, social inequality, and Civil Rights activism. Central questions include the consumption of African Americans, and consumption by African Americans. Because much theory on consumption implicitly assumes a normative consumer who is white and middle class, consideration of African Americans and
At crucial moments in a people’s history, the question ‘‘What is to be done?’’ is raised. Alongside this question, additional questions will follow, such as ‘‘Who will do it, when, and how?’’ When one explores such works as Plato’s Republic, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Comte’s Course in Positive Philosophy, and Marx’s Communist Manifesto, one is deeply
An ethnic or racial division of labor exists in a society in which ethnic or racial groups have distinctive concentrations or specializations in particular lines of work. Ethnic/racial divisions of labor may arise through relatively benign labor market sorting processes, or they may be the result of systematic acts of bigotry and discrimination, often with
The term ethnic cleansing refers to various policies of forcibly removing people of another ethnic group. At the more general level it can be understood as the expulsion of any ‘‘undesirable’’ population from a given territory not only due to its ethnicity but also as a result of its religion, or for political, ideological, or
The ethnic enclave is a subeconomy that offers protected access to labor and markets, informal sources of credit, and business information for immigrant businesses and workers. Ethnic enclaves offer entrepreneurial opportunities and earnings for immigrant owners and managers through the exploitation of immigrant labor in poor working conditions. They are phenomena that advance our understanding
Ethnic groups are fundamental units of social organization which consist of members who define themselves, or are defined, by a sense of common historical origins that may also include religious beliefs, a similar language, or a shared culture. Their continuity over time as distinct groups is achieved through the inter generational transmission of culture, traditions
Ethnic/informal economy is inconsistently defined by scholars. This slows progress in explicating the social underpinnings of ethnic/informal economies and in understanding how these economic systems affect the socioeconomic well being of members of various ethnic groups. Fortunately, there is a common theme to the definitions one finds in the literature. All variants convey a sense
The ancient Greek word ethnos, the root of ‘‘ethnicity,’’ referred to people living and acting together in a manner that we might apply to a ‘‘people’’ or a ‘‘nation’’: a collectivity with a ‘‘way of life’’ – some manners and mores, practices and purposes – in common, whose members share something in terms of ‘‘culture.’’
Ethnocentrism is a belief that the norms, values, ideology, customs, and traditions of one’s own culture or subculture are superior to those characterizing other cultural settings. The term was coined by William Graham Sumner in his Folkways (1906) and has long served as a cornerstone in the social analysis of culture. While ethnocentrism arguably is
Ethnonationalism (or ethnic nationalism) connotes identity with and loyalty to a nation in the sense of a human grouping predicated upon a myth of common ancestry. Seldom will the myth find support in scientific evidence. DNA analyses of the patrilineally bequeathed Y chromosome attest that nations tend to be neither genetically homogeneous nor hermetical, and
Eurocentrism is a particular case of the more general phenomenon of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism refers to the regard of one’s own ethnic group or society as superior to others. Other groups are assessed and judged in terms of the categories and standards of evaluation of one’s own group. Eurocentrism, therefore, is defined as a thought style
The term ghetto is a concept with many meanings. It is frequently used to describe any dense areas of Jewish residence, even if no compulsory policies of residential segregation were imposed. It is also employed as a description of the geographical and social isolation of minorities other than Jews; for example, it is applied to
Race interacts with health just as it does with other life determining, sociodemographic factors like class, gender, and age. Race is best understood as a shared set of cultural and social experiences common to people of the same skin color. Research has shown that the notion of distinct biological races is misleading because often more
The stark facts of the Holocaust can be summarized. When Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party came to power in Germany in 1933, they initiated measures against Germany’s Jews. Before their rise to power the Nazis, under Hitler, had openly and vehemently blamed Jews for all of Germany’s ills in the years following the
The Self-Directed Search (SDS) is an interest inventory based on John Holland’s RIASEC theory that people, work, and educational environments can be classified according to six basic types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional (RIASEC). According to the SDS’s publisher, Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc., the SDS is the most widely used interest inventory in
The Strong Interest Inventory, published by CPP, Inc., and commonly referred to as the Strong, is one of the most widely used and scientifically grounded tools available for assessing people’s career and life interests. The Strong measures an individual’s work and personal interests and compares them to those of people employed in a wide range
The System of Interactive Guidance Information (SIGI) is a computer-assisted career guidance system (CACGS) for university students and adults. It is a computer program designed to help people make informed career decisions via self-assessments and in-depth, current educational and job information. The program also has an educational aspect that teaches users about the career decision-making
The Transition Behavior Scale, Second Edition (TBS-2) has as its intention the identification of behaviors that are thought to interfere with successful societal transition and employment from high school to adult life for special needs students. There are two versions of the TBS-2: a self-report instrument (to be completed by the student) and a school
The Unisex Edition of the ACT Interest Inventory (UNIACT) is an assessment designed to identify personally relevant career (educational and occupational) options. Results are intended to help people see the connection between the work world and the activities they like to do. UNIACT is a component of several programs and services offered by ACT, such
The Values Scale (VS) is used to assess values in life roles, largely in relation to work. Items query both values desired in life roles and the place of work in value manifestation. The VS can be used in career counseling to identify areas of values conflict and deficits in career development and to connect
Dealing with career indecision has long been a focus of theory and research, and helping clients to overcome their difficulties in making decisions is among the core roles of career counseling. The Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) is based on the taxonomy of career decision-making difficulties proposed by Gati, Krausz, and Osipow and was developed
Brown’s values-based career theory emphasizes the central importance of values in career counseling and occupational choice. Values are defined as cognitive structures that are the basis for self-evaluation and one’s evaluation of others. Values also have an affective dimension, are the primary basis of goal-directed behavior, and are the stimulus for the development of behavior
Career advancement has been for decades a topic of many books found in the self-help, career, and especially the business sections of bookstores. It is not a topic commonly found in career counseling or vocational psychology textbooks or journal articles. There are several assumptions and key concepts and characteristics commonly found in books about career
The global economy of the 21st century with its digitalization and worker migration poses new questions about career, especially the question of how individuals can negotiate a lifetime of job changes without losing their sense of self and social identity. Career construction theory responds to the needs of today’s mobile workers who may feel fragmented
The process of acquiring knowledge is the essence of higher education. Career decision making is a tangible expression of this process, and since almost half of all college students change majors and even more change career goals while in college, career services for higher education students are crucial to the mission of the institution. Characteristics
Those who prefer a narrow definition of forensic psychology do not typically include police psychology in its purview. We have done so because police are sworn to uphold the law and are in many cases the gatekeepers to entry into criminal and juvenile courts, if not civil courts. Thus, psychologists who consult with police in
Lewis Terman (1917) was the first American psychologist to use “mental tests” as screening devices in the selection of law enforcement personnel. On October 31, 1916, at the request of the city manager of San Jose, California, he administered an abbreviated form of the Stanford-Binet to 30 police and fire department applicants. They ranged in
In the years between the two world wars, psychologists gradually became more involved in the screening of law enforcement personnel and began to incorporate personality assessment into that enterprise. Wilmington, Delaware, and Toledo, Ohio, appear to share the distinction of being the first two cities to require ongoing psychological screening for use in police selection
In the early years of the 20th century, psychologists began to offer psychological perspectives on criminal behavior and to speculate about the causes of crime. Like the police psychology discussed earlier, criminal psychology typically is not considered in the narrow definitions of forensic psychology, primarily because it appears more theoretical than clinical in nature. However
As previously stated, the APA Ethics Code comprises 10 specific standards intended to serve as enforceable rules of conduct that psychologists are obliged to follow. Unlike the general principles to which psychologists should aspire, these standards constitute requirements they are expected to meet in order to remain in compliance with the Ethics Code. The standards
Forensic psychologists must deal regularly with two related aspects of principled practice that warrant further elaboration. The first of these concerns the obligation of practitioners to prevent their personal values from affecting their professional conduct. The second aspect concerns the professional responsibility of forensic psychologists to resist expectations or demands of attorneys that, although falling
Given that the training and career goals of forensic psychologists can differ markedly within and across categories, training programs have developed divergent programmatic approaches to educating their students so that they can attain these disparate goals. These programmatic approaches are not based solely on achieving specific training goals, however. They are also subject to administrative
The section on general principles in the APA Ethics Code delineates five aspirational goals toward which psychologists should strive in their practice, teaching, and research. 1. Beneficence and malfeasance Psychologists should safeguard the rights and welfare of those to whom they provide services and maintain vigilance to ensure that their influence is not misused. They
In assessing a forensic program, it is reasonable to ask about faculty and adjunct supervisor qualifications and expertise. It is important that programs have faculty members who are well qualified to teach and supervise in the areas to which they are assigned (APA, 2002, Standard 2.01). Although this admonition sounds obvious, as the pressure for
Academic achievement is axiomatic to career development processes. In people’s lives, academic choices, barriers, or opportunities occur early and frequently, and they have a pervasive and lasting influence on career development. For example, a middle school student’s choice of or opportunity for educational curricula limits or broadens the student’s subsequent opportunity for learning experiences; a
Many psychologists use labels such as achievement test, aptitude test, and ability test imprecisely, and nonpsychologists use them as synonyms. This lack of precision is understandable because in actual practice, tests bearing these labels often appear to be quite similar and are used for similar purposes. This entry explains the theoretical distinction among achievement, aptitude
The career concerns presented to counselors by adults vary widely. Some clients are making new career choices, others are coping with adjustment problems, and still others are planning retirement. To identify the career issues that most concern an individual, Donald Super, Albert Thompson, and Richard Lindeman constructed the Adult Career Concerns inventory (ACCI). The ACCI
The ASVAB, shorthand for the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, anchors the Career Exploration Program (CEP) offered free to schools by the Military Enlistment Processing Command through teams of Educational Services Specialists. The CEP encourages exploration through OCCU-Find, which integrates vocational interests with ASVAB scores and Occupational Information Network. This entry is based on available
Biodata, or biographical data, are paper and pencil measures that ask respondents to reflect or report on their life experiences. Scores from biodata are typically used in conjunction with other employment measures for predicting individual performance in a given job. Biodata have been used across a wide range of occupations as an indicator of the
The Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS) is a career assessment instrument that analyzes an individual’s self-reported interests and skills to assist in effective career planning and decision making. The CISS provides four kinds of scales that help individuals age 15 through adult understand how their interests and skills relate to important areas in the
Card sorts are nonstandardized and subjective assessments commonly used in career counseling to help clients clarify their skills and career interests. This entry provides descriptions of the history and varieties of vocational card sorts (VCSs), research findings, and the advantages of using card sorts in career counseling. Card Sorts Overview In this type of assessment
The Career Attitudes and Strategies Inventory (CASI) is a 130-item, paper and pencil, self-report assessment by John L. Holland and Gary D. Gottfredson. The CASI is intended to give the employed or unemployed adult client and career counselor information regarding the client’s likelihood of job stability or change, potential career obstacles, or areas for further
Career barriers have been hypothesized to affect the career development process by inhibiting career aspirations and restricting the range of perceived career opportunities. The Career Barriers Inventory (CBI) is a psychometrically sound, multidimensional, self-report instrument that was developed to assess for career-related barriers. The CBI assesses for a broad array of barriers that college students
The Career Beliefs Inventory (CBI) is a tool designed to help people identify career beliefs that may be preventing them from taking action to achieve their career goals. Many people hold beliefs that block their career progress. Maybe they believe that there is only one path to a successful career and that they have already
The Career Decision Scale (CDS) grew out of S. H. Osipow, C. Carney, J. Winer, B. Yanico, and M. Koschier’s counseling experience with undergraduate students who sought help in dealing with their inability to decide on an educational or career goal. Specifically, it was thought that identifying a limited number of problems connected with that
The Career Decision Self-Efficacy Scale (CDSE) was developed by Karen Taylor and Nancy Betz in order to apply Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy expectations to the domain of career decision making. Career decision self-efficacy was originally defined by Taylor and Betz as the individual’s belief that he or she can successfully complete tasks necessary in
The Career Development Inventory (CDI) is a 120-item standardized measure of career development attitudes and knowledge first published in 1979. This measure operationally defines career maturity based on Donald Super’s theory of career development. In general, the CDI assesses level of readiness for making realistic educational and career-related decisions. There are two forms of the
The Career Mastery Inventory (CMAS) evolved from the Career Adjustment and Development Inventory (CADI), a measure that was developed by John Crites as a means of assessing important facets related to career adjustment and development in early adulthood. Accordingly, six developmental tasks associated with the establishment stage of career development were identified. The establishment stage
The Career Maturity Inventory (CMI) is a 50-item standardized measure designed to assess the process of how adolescents and adults approach career development tasks. John Crites developed this measure in the 1960s as the Vocational Development Inventory to assess the readiness attitudes of students in making appropriate vocational plans. It became the CMI in 1973
The Career Occupational Preference System (COPSystem) is a coordinated career guidance program consisting of three assessment instruments all keyed to eight major career clusters. The three assessment components are the COPSystem Interest Inventory (COPS), the Career Ability Placement Survey (CAPS), and the Career Orientation Placement and Evaluation Survey (COPES) and their accompanying interpretive materials. Interpretation
The Career Planning Survey is a paper-based career assessment system designed to help students in Grades 8 through 10 identify and explore personally relevant occupations and high school courses. The assessment elements consist of an interest inventory, an inventory of ability self-estimates, and two optional academic ability tests. In addition, students can complete checklists assessing
A difficult task facing career counselors concerns applying abstract career theories to concrete problems presented by clients. Over the years, counselor educators have voiced concern about their trainees’ ability to accurately assess client problems and make sound clinical decisions. In practice, novice career counselors also become perplexed by the multitude of career methods and materials
The career style interview (CSI) consists of six questions and is the primary means of assessment for those interested in applying the theory of career construction as developed by Mark L. Savickas. This theory helps individuals to find meaning in the nonlinear careers of today and is an expansion and clarification of Donald Super’s life-span
The Career Thoughts Inventory (CTI) is a theory-based assessment and intervention resource intended to improve thinking in career problem solving and decision making. The CTI measures dysfunctional career thoughts that may inhibit the ability to effectively engage in career decision making. The 48-item inventory is self-administered and objectively scored. The assessment is designed to be
The Career Transitions Inventory (CTI) is a 40-item Likert format measure designed to assess an individual’s internal process variables that may serve as strengths or barriers when making a career transition. For purposes of this instrument, the term career transition was defined as a situation in which any of the following kinds of career changes
There is an adage, “Give people a fish and they eat for a day, but teach them to fish and they eat for a lifetime.” This wise maxim succinctly captures the ultimate aim of the cognitive information processing (CIP) approach to career counseling—that is, enabling individuals to become skillful career problem solvers and decision makers.
The College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ) is a versatile tool that assesses the quality of effort college students expend in using resources and opportunities provided by an institution for their learning and development. Quality of effort is a key dimension for understanding student satisfaction and persistence and for understanding the effects of attending college. The
DISCOVER Career Planning Program from ACT, inc., is a comprehensive computer-based career guidance system offered on the Internet for Grade 5 through adult. it includes inventories of interest, abilities, and values plus detailed information about occupations (civilian and military), majors, schools, financial aid, and the job search. The results of the career exploration process are
The Employee Aptitude Survey (EAS), used for more than 50 years in selection and career counseling, was developed to yield “maximum validity per minute of testing time” (Ruch, Stang, McKillip, & Dye, 1994, p. 9). Derived from earlier ability tests, it consists of 10 short tests that may be given singly or in any combination.
The Environmental Assessment Technique (EAT) was developed by John L. Holland and Alexander W. Astin to quickly and easily capture the dominant beliefs, functioning, and goals of the individuals within an organization, using Holland’s six environmental models. The EAT consists of eight scales: Institutional Size, Aptitude Level, and six Personal Orientation scales. Theoretical Background The
No universally accepted conceptual definition of interests has emerged in vocational psychology. As a result, interests often are defined as what an assessment measures. At the most basic level, operational definitions of interests commonly focus on an individual’s constellation or pattern of likes and dislikes for vocational, academic, and leisure activities, as well as for
The General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) was developed by the U.S. Employment Service (USES) for use in occupational counseling, primarily by national agencies and in state employment offices. The measure was published in 1947, revised several times, and discontinued in 2002. The battery assessed multiple cognitive, perceptual, and psychomotor abilities as preferred rather than general
The Hall Occupational Orientation Inventory (HOOI) is an ambitious undertaking designed to aid career and personal exploration through the self-assessment of needs, values, interests, and abilities. Resembling a psychometric one-stop shop, items cover more dimensions at once than other tools used for similar exploratory purposes. The HOOI was originally published in 1968 in three forms:
The Jackson Vocational Interest Inventory (commonly known as the Jackson Vocational Interest Survey or JVIS) is a standardized, normed career interest test that was first published by Douglas Jackson in 1977 after 8 years of research on vocational roles and styles. With the use of factor analytic and related multivariate techniques, Jackson created a unique
Kuder Career Search (KCS) represents the third generation of interest inventories known as the Kuder Preference Records. First was the Kuder Preference Record—Vocational, which gave scores on 10 vocational interest scales. Next was the Occupational, which reported occupations that were similar to the inventory takers’ interests. The KCS consists of two kinds of scales. One
The Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (MIQ) is a measure of work needs and work values. Work needs are a person’s requirements for satisfaction in work. Job satisfaction results when the conditions in work (work reinforcers) correspond to one’s work needs. The MIQ measures work needs by asking the person how important the following 20 work reinforcers
Career assessment involves an ongoing process of gathering information to assist clients to make career-related decisions. Useful information to gather in career assessment includes but is not limited to understanding a person’s personality, values, skills, interests, life roles, and career history. Assessment information is typically gathered via intake interviews, standardized tests and inventories, and non-standardized
As societies, especially in the United States, have become more diverse, counselors are expected to be able to deliver competent services to a wide variety of clients. Such competency concerns call for measures that facilitate professionals collecting and managing the data needed for meaningful and successful interventions in cross-cultural career counseling. The Multicultural Career Counseling
The My Vocational Situation (MVS) scale is a self-report screening tool developed for use with high school, college, and adult career counseling clients. The MVS was authored by John L. Holland, Denise Daiger, and Paul G. Power. After a 10-minute administration time, it provides information on clients’ vocational identity status, knowledge of career information, and
The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) obtains, on an annual basis, information from tens of thousands of students at hundreds of colleges and universities nationwide. The NSSE survey, administered during the spring academic term to randomly selected first-year students and seniors, asks about their participation in programs and activities that institutions offer for learning
Performance modeling refers to the complex process of describing and defining job performance and facilitating the consequent goal of accurate prediction of job performance. It is a concept of particular significance in the area of industrial-organizational psychology as a measure of evaluation for the individual worker and the organization as a whole. Performance modeling also
One of the first and even now most-used tools of career counselors is the interest inventory. Inventories currently in use may be described as taking either of two approaches. One tells a person the relative strengths of his or her interests; the other tells the person what occupations have similar interests as his or hers.
The term personality typically refers to one’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving. In addition to the stable, trait-like features often evoked by this construct (e.g., sociability, dominance, modesty), many theories also emphasize the roles of culture, family, and other environmental factors involved in personality expression and development. This predominant individual differences variable has
Person-environment fit models are among the most widely used and influential models in vocational psychology. Ultimately, these models trace their lineage to Frank Parsons’s suggestion that job outcomes could be improved by carefully matching the attributes of an individual with the characteristics of an occupation. In the 1930s, advances in statistics and psychometrics allowed Parsons’s
The prescreening, in-depth exploration, and choice (PIC) model, proposed by Gati and Asher in 2001, provides a practical systematic framework for making career decisions based on decision theory. The PIC model consists of three stages: (1) prescreening the potential set of career alternatives to locate a small and thus manageable set of promising alternatives; (2)
Riding the bicycle to work, walking up the stairs to the apartment, taking a book from the shelf, and playing the violin are all examples of motor activities, which are signified by the planning of future goal states, the coordination of different limbs and various whole-body postures, and the regulation of muscle forces during the
Multimodal mental training, also known as mental skills training or psychological skills training (PST), involves educating athletes, coaches, and exercisers on the effective use and implementation of psychological techniques and skills that are associated with sporting and exercising excellence. Discussed here are the goals of such interventions; common components of multimodal mental training; and phases
Traditional approaches to helping individuals change health behaviors focus on reflective processes. In other words, in these approaches, the first thing a practitioner might do is identify what a client thinks about a behavior. Thus, initial counseling may focus on increasing positive beliefs and perceived benefits associated with that behavior and challenging less positive beliefs. Support
The effects of music in sport and exercise contexts have been of interest to researchers for over 100 years. Recent advances in digital music technology and the facility for users to formulate their own playlists have dramatically increased the prevalence of music in both the sports training and health club environments. Even at the high
The term narcotics is commonly used to refer loosely to a broad range of drugs, from marijuana to cocaine. More accurately, the narcotic drugs consist of opium and its derivatives, also known as opiate drugs. The most common opiate drugs include heroin, morphine, and codeine, and their use leads to a sense of numbness resulting
Among the most frequently occurring neurologic diseases in Europe and North America are multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, cerebrovascular diseases, brain and spinal cord trauma, and chronic headache. These neurologic disorders are also the most relevant for treatment with sport therapy, a motion-therapeutic method that compensates and regenerates disturbed bodily, mental, and social functions; prevents secondary
In the fields of neuroscience and cognitive science, human cognition is broadly defined as a component of brain function that includes information processing, memory, attention, perception, language, and executive function related to decision making (DM) and the initiation or inhibition of behavior. In the context of sport and exercise psychology, researchers have been interested in
In a broad sense, norms reflect inferences about accepted, appropriate, valued, and/or desirable behavior. Norms differ from rules and laws in that they are implicit (as opposed to explicit) in nature, and normative influences have been studied since at least the late 19th century in the fields of social psychology and sociology. More recently, these
Obesity is commonly defined as a body mass index of 30 kg/m2or higher. Increasing rates of obesity in many countries represent a great challenge for public health. In the United States, for example, the rate of adult obesity exceeds 35%. Obesity is associated with increased risk of premature mortality resulting from chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes,
Optimism is an expectation for positive or desirable outcomes to occur. Viewed by some as an inherent and evolutionarily adaptive aspect of human biology, it has been examined by psychologists both as a relatively stable dispositional trait (“big optimism”) and as a less stable, situation-specific state of mind (“little optimism”). In its dispositional form, optimism
The statement “No sweet without sweat!” is well known by athletes of any age. It expresses the time and cost athletes have to invest to achieve top-class performances. K. Anders Ericsson suggested that athletes must practice for 10,000 hours or 10 years to become experts in an activity. However, extensive training holds many pitfalls if
The developmental psychologist Jacquelynne Eccles suggested that parents influence their children’s involvement in sport in three ways: as providers, role models, and interpreters. Parents provide children with opportunities to participate in sport by signing them up for programs, transporting them to practices and matches, paying registration fees, and so on. Parents can act as role
The most commonly and consistently cited motives for participating in sport are developing and displaying competence (from learning new skills), experiencing challenges and success, acquiring social benefits that arise from affiliation to a group or team, improving fitness, and having fun. On the other hand, reasons for sport withdrawal include the attraction of other activities,
The dualistic model of passion (DMP) describes two types of passion, namely harmonious and obsessive passion. This model allows for a better understanding of the passion of people involved in sport (athletes, coaches, referees, and fans) as well as the outcomes they experience. The DMP defines passion as a strong inclination toward a self-defining activity
In the sporting domain, pattern recognition and recall refer to the capability of athletes to recognize or recall the patterns formed by the configuration of key elements (such as teammates and opposing players) that exist within the playing environment. An enhanced capability to quickly and accurately extract information from these unique pattern structures has been
Perfectionism is a personality disposition characterized by striving for flawlessness and setting exceedingly high standards for performance, accompanied by tendencies for overly critical evaluations. It is a disposition that may pervade all areas of life, particularly areas in which performance plays as major role (e.g., work, school). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that perfectionism
Performance enhancement is of major importance in competitive and elite sports. Among the many methods to enhance performance in sports, such as specialized training and diet regimes, some athletes seek resort to performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Following the drug-related death of British cyclist Tom Simpson during the 1967 Tour de France, a controversy erupted concerning the
Personality is typically defined as a person’s distinctive and enduring (i.e., cross-situational) thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that characterize the person’s reactions to life situations. Personality traits are also defined as specific properties that predispose a person to react in certain ways in given classes of situations—sport, for example. Some personality traits are genetically determined and
In the past 30 years, personality researchers have amassed a considerable body of evidence to support the importance of traits as crucial determinants of behavior. This research has shown that personality is structured similarly across over 50 cultures, shows evidence of genetic heritability, has high stability across time, and does not relate strongly to parental
Pleasure and displeasure comprise a bipolar dimension that is the most important ingredient of core affect. As such, pleasure and displeasure provide texture to conscious experiences and form the foundation of emotions and moods. Furthermore, pleasure and displeasure have long been considered by many philosophers and psychologists as powerful motives. Pleasure is of particular interest
Traditionally, sport psychologists have placed great value on athletes thinking positively about upcoming and imminent performances. Compared with practicing sport psychologists who have demonstrated a keen interest in positive thinking, theorists and researchers have not. As a result, a systematic and thorough knowledge base regarding what positive thinking is and why it is so sought
As a child, whom did you want to be when you grew up? A firefighter? A professional athlete? Where did this idea come from? Something you saw on television? Or perhaps you were emulating parent or other significant adult. As you entered high school, it’s likely you began to think more seriously about your future.
Practice typically comprises activities that are designed to help a person acquire a new skill, improve in an already acquired skill, or maintain a skill. Practice can be deliberate and engaged in for a specific purpose (such as attaining a speed or accuracy goal) or it can be more incidental in nature, potentially engaged in
Preperformance routines refer to the consistent sequence of thoughts and actions in which a performer engages before executing a skill. Typically, they are associated with performing self-paced skills in which the performer decides when to initiate the action. Examples include sports such as golf, snooker, archery, and static target shooting, as well as individual elements
Priming refers to the process of temporarily activating an individual’s mental constructs (i.e., trait concepts, stereotypes, contexts, goals) and observing the subsequent effect of this activation on psychological, social, and/or motor behavior phenomena. Every individual possesses a set of mental representations (that are constantly being added to or developed) about themselves and the world around
In sport, some events, occurrences, and outcomes are more probable than others, and the potential exists to use information about probabilities to aid performance. This entry discusses two levels on which probabilities are relevant to sport performance. The first is the individual, immediate performance level. On this level, probabilities are used implicitly during performance; performers
The protection motivation theory (PMT) originally aimed at explaining why people develop protection motivation and what role fear-appeals play in this process. A protection motivation might be an intention to adopt or adhere to a fitness program. Athletes might fear to perform not at their best form if they do not attend training. Exercisers could fear
Injury is a common occurrence in association with sport participation. Most sport injuries are minor, require minimal medical intervention, and have limited impact on the sport involvement of athletes. However, a substantial number of injuries are of sufficient severity to require more extensive medical treatment (e.g., immobilization, surgery), rehabilitation, and restriction of sport involvement. In
Psychological skills training (PST) involves training athletes and exercisers to learn psychological skills (e.g., relaxation skills) that help these performers regulate their psychological state (e.g., their feelings of confidence). PST is of interest within sport and exercise psychology (SEP) because psychological states can affect sport and exercise performance; if performers can regulate their psychological states via
Psychological well-being (PWB) is defined as one’s level of psychological happiness/health, encompassing life satisfaction, and feelings of accomplishment. At the risk of being dualistic and separating physical well-being from PWB, it is helpful to note that physical well-being encompasses physical health, including disease states, fitness level, and ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL).
Psychopharmacology refers to the study of the actions of drugs on behavior. Drugs and substances with the potential to modify or completely change human behavior are best known as psychoactive. It is noteworthy that psychopharmacology has developed along with advances in neuroscience research. These two fields of scientific inquiry revealed the mechanisms of brain function—and
Quality of life (QOL) assessments are instrumental in developing a more comprehensive understanding of the efficacy of disease prevention and health promotion interventions. There is growing interest in delineating the role of exercise in enhancing QOL outcomes. Indeed, findings from multiple reviews on the effect of exercise on QOL reveal that exercise consistently results in
The term race is not easily defined; it has complicated and contested meanings contingent upon historical and social contexts. In a general sense, scholars within, and outside, sport psychology (SP) have conceptualized race as having biological and/or social distinctions. From a biological perspective, race refers to individuals who are perceived by others, and perhaps by
Race can be understood as a concept that signifies meanings and struggles over power in reference to skin color. Within the social sciences, most consider race to be not a biologically valid concept but rather a social construction. The issue of race in sport and exercise psychology is important because while the majority of professionals
Pattern recognition and recall paradigms are the concepts, theories, and methods that are typically used to examine and explain the underlying mechanisms contributing to the capability of performers to recognize and/or recall information from their domain. A vast amount of evidence has demonstrated that experienced performers are better than novices at recalling the locations of
Given that forensic psychology involves the application of psychology to the legal system, it is not surprising that much of the work of forensic psychologists involves assisting specific legal actors. In this section, we discuss the different ways in which forensic psychologists may assist law enforcement agencies, attorneys, litigants, and others. Assisting Law Enforcement Within
With respect to assisting litigants and others in the legal system, psychologists act in quasi-judicial capacities and also provide therapeutic services. Quasi-Judicial Roles Over the past quarter of a century, psychologists have become increasingly involved in a number of activities in which they serve as decision makers for persons involved in the legal process. Psychologists’
In addition to researching the legal system and its functioning, psychologists conduct research on a multitude of psychological factors or phenomena that are of particular interest to the legal system. Some of these areas of inquiry are discussed next. Researching Psychological Phenomena Some psychological phenomena are of particular interest to the legal system given their
Legal psychology refers to psychological theory, research, and practice directly pertinent to the law and legal issues. It focuses on psycholegal research and contacts with judges, lawyers, and other law-related professionals in a wide range of contexts. The origins of legal psychology can be traced to the work of experimental psychologists in Europe in the
Corporate ethics can be defined in several ways: conceptually, operationally, officially, and actually. Conceptual arguments about the definition of organizational ethics focus on questions of stakeholder status and are defined by two theories, stakeholder theory and social contracts theory. Operational approaches to increasing ethical behavior in organizations may be more or less proactive and are
For most people in work organizations, the organization as a whole is a relatively abstract entity. Their day-to-day work experience is shaped far more by the work group, team, department, or work unit than by the organization as a whole. The work group is their direct social environment at work and the most important social influence
Individuals differ from one another behaviorally in myriad ways. Differential psychology, the scientific study of these individual differences, provides an organizational structure for this vast array of psychological attributes. By examining broad behavioral patterns and using systematic assessments of relatively stable personal attributes, differential psychology allows longitudinal forecasting of a variety of important life outcomes.
Job satisfaction refers to the overall feelings one has and the evaluation one makes about one’s job. People with high job satisfaction experience a pleasurable or positive emotional state when they think about their job or job experiences. In simple terms, they like their jobs. Since early studies in the 1930s, job satisfaction has become
Pinpointing the origins of courtroom testimony by psychologists in Europe is not easy. Sources differ, often depending on the nature of the forum (e.g., civil versus criminal court, preliminary hearing versus trial) or its context (informal conversation with a judge versus formal testimony). Hale (1980) suggests that the earliest testimony by a psychologist in a
Leadership is the process by which a leader influences another person or group and focuses the followers’ behavior on a goal or outcome. Persuading a subordinate to clean up his or her work area could be seen as a form of leadership, as could convincing hundreds of people to volunteer for disaster relief work. Influencing
Organizational behavior (OB) can be defined as the study of human behavior in the workplace. More specifically, investigators employ the principles of the scientific method to help them understand, predict, and manage employee behavior. The knowledge that follows rigorous, systematic study is used to enhance the productivity of organizations and the quality of work life
Organizational development (OD) is a field of professional practice focused on facilitating organizational change and improvement. The theory and practice of OD is grounded in both the social and behavioral sciences. The field originated in the 1960s and has been evolving ever since. This evolution has been influenced by a wide range of disciplines including
The term recruitment refers to a set of organizational activities and practices that are intended to attract new hires to an organization. The goal of recruitment is to generate applicants who are qualified for employment, who will accept employment offers, and who will ultimately succeed on the job. Recruitment is an important complement to employee
Work motivation is one of the most central and highly researched topics in industrial-organizational psychology. Even the earliest textbooks in I/O psychology addressed motivation and topics related to it, such as morale, job attitudes, productivity, and job performance. Several definitions have been offered, but the one adopted here was first advanced by the author in
At the turn of the 20th century, American psychologists remained comparatively uninterested in applying research on topics related to law. One reason was that they were just beginning to explore the broad psychological landscape and had little inclination to specialize in law-related matters. This reticence was probably also due to the influence of Wilhelm Wundt
It is generally believed that American psychologists have served as expert witnesses since the early 1920s (Comment, 1979), but, like their European counterparts, they consulted with lawyers and the courts, perhaps particularly the civil courts, before that time. Included in this latter category are the juvenile courts, which were a hybrid of the civil and
During the years in which Munsterberg was proselytizing about psychology’s usefulness in the courtroom, particularly involving expert testimony, another American psychologist was more quietly making inroads into a different forensic area, one specifically related to juvenile courts. As we noted earlier, consultation with these courts was common, but it was chiefly in the area of
The discipline of organizational behavior focuses on the study of organizations and the people who populate them. Generally and historically, the field has been largely divided into those who study the attributes of organizations and their markets (macro organizational behavior) and those who study the attributes of people in organizations (micro organizational behavior). Typically, macro
Automation usually refers to the replacement of human work by machines. The word was first used by the Ford Motor Company in the 1940s to describe automatic handling and machine-feeding devices in their manufacturing processes. Advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) is a special instance of automation and usually refers to computer-based manufacturing technologies and support systems.
Balanced scorecard is a management system that enables organizations to translate vision and strategy into action. This system provides feedback on internal business processes and external outcomes to continually improve organizational performance and results. Robert Kaplan and David Norton created the balanced scorecard approach in the early 1990s. Most traditional management systems focus on the
In compressed workweek schedules, the workweek is compressed into fewer than five days by increasing the number of hours an employee is required to work each day. The most common form of compressed workweek in the United States is the four-day, 40-hour workweek (4/40). Usually employees will take either Friday or Monday off, extending their
Downsizing, layoffs, and rightsizing are forms of organizational restructuring. Organizational restructuring refers to planned changes in organizational structure that affect the use of people. Organizational restructuring often results in workforce reductions that may be accomplished through mechanisms such as attrition, early retirements, voluntary severance agreements, or layoffs. The term layoffs is used sometimes as if
Entrepreneurship is about starting an organization, organizing effort, and exploiting opportunities (with the phases of emergence, recognition, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities). Small and medium-sized enterprises are the major agents of economic development and growth, adding new jobs, in contrast to most large companies. Entrepreneurial activity predicts wealth creation across nations. Entrepreneurs start new organizations
Flexible work schedules, also known as flextime schedules, grants employees some freedom in deciding what time of day they will arrive at and leave from work. For example, an employee may prefer to work from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. one day of the week and from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on another day.
Globalization is the most significant change taking place in today’s work environment. It connotes the economic interdependence among countries that develops through cross-national flows of goods and services, capital, know-how, and people. This entry covers mainly the organizational and human aspects of globalization. Globalization has come into common use since the 1980s, reflecting technological advances
The contemporary flexible, high-performance organization model is a primary alternative to the classical bureaucratic model, popularly known as Taylorism. Several historical trends have contributed to the development of the high-performance model. Beginning in the 1930s, increased attention was focused on the human impact of work, especially in assembly-line type settings. The Hawthorne Studies, and especially
Simply put, a learning organization is one that is skilled at learning. However, since the concept rose to prominence during the 1990s, the precise nature of the learning and the characteristics of a learning organization have been the source of much debate. Many models have emerged, each describing different combinations of features that typify a
Mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances have become entrenched in the repertoire of contemporary business executives. Mergers and acquisitions have the potential to accelerate the execution of a business strategy by rapidly helping a firm expand its product or service mix, move into new regional or international markets, capture new customers, or even eliminate a competitor.
Change has been considered the most reliable constant within organizations. Yet, although the phenomenon has been recognized as important for years, organizational change is one of the least understood aspects of organization life, evidenced by numerous failed initiatives. In spite of the books and articles written about managing change, perhaps the paradox between prevalence and
The term organizational climate has been used in many different ways to refer to a wide variety of constructs. In recent years some consensus about what precisely should be included in the construct—and what should not be included in the construct—has begun to emerge. Research interest in climate has remained high, despite the variety of
Formal organizational communication is not an easily defined term. Organizational communication is a complicated phenomenon that has no clear boundaries. Several definitions attempt to conceptualize the abstract nature of organizational communication. The study of organizational communication involves the intersection of two complex and dynamic concepts: organizations and communications. An organization has three primary characteristics: Social
Some scholars argue that the informal organization is more powerful than the formal organization. Scholars also suggest that a great deal of communication in organizations is informal communication. Elton Mayo and his famous Hawthorne studies found that informal communication influenced the development and reinforcement of performance standards, member expectations, and values at the work group
Organizational image refers to people’s global impressions of an organization; it is defined as people’s loose structures of knowledge and beliefs about an organization. Organizational image represents the net cognitive reactions and associations of customers, investors, employees, and applicants to an organization’s name. Accordingly, it serves as a template to categorize, store, and recall organization-related
The term organizational politics refers to the informal ways people try to exercise influence in organizations through the management of shared meaning. As such, politics should be viewed as neither an inherently bad nor good phenomenon but rather one to be observed, analyzed, and comprehended to gain a more informed understanding of organizations and how
It has been broadly reported that change is happening at an accelerated rate in organizations. As a result, employees are constantly required to understand the changes, cope with the challenges, and ultimately adapt. In this environment, a typical employee response is to resist the change. A recent review of empirical research on reactions to change
Organizational sensemaking is not an established body of knowledge; it is a developing set of ideas drawn from a range of disciplines (e.g., cognitive psychology, social psychology, communication studies, and cultural analysis) concerning a particular way to approach organization studies. Central to the sensemaking perspective is the notion that explanations of organizational issues cannot be
Organizational socialization (OS) is the process through which a newcomer to an organization transitions from outsider to integrated and effective insider. This longitudinal process includes the acquisition or adjustment of shared values, attitudes, skills, knowledge, abilities, behaviors, and workplace relationships. Organizational socialization occurs whenever an employee crosses an organizational boundary. The OS research mainly focuses
Organizational structure refers to the formal and informal manner in which people, job tasks, and other organizational resources are configured and coordinated. Although organizational structure sounds like a singular characteristic, it is composed of a number of dimensions, because there are multiple ways the employees within an organization and the job tasks that are carried
Outsourcing is typically the domain of trade economists, whereas nonstandard work arrangements are the province of labor economists. Temporary work is one aspect of nonstandard work arrangements just as are part-time work, contract work, and other work forms. Although there are many polemics on the positive and negative results of outsourcing and nonstandard work on
Shiftwork is a term used to describe an arrangement of working hours that differs from the standard daylight working hours (i.e., 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.). Organizations that adopt shiftwork schedules extend their normal working hours beyond the traditional eight-hour shifts by using successive teams of workers. Notable examples of organizations that adopt shiftwork schedules
The sociotechnical approach to organizational structure was developed in England during the late 1940s by Eric Trist and his colleagues at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. These researchers conducted seminal studies on the coal mining industry, where the introduction of new technology had shifted the social patterns of work so profoundly that productivity and
Strategic planning is a process by which organizations put business plans into action in the marketplace. This process differs from the annual planning process in which most organizations engage in that it is typically geared toward a longer-term planning horizon. Most organizations today consider the duration of a strategic plan to be anywhere from three
Downsizing is the planned elimination of jobs and positions in order to decrease the number of workers employed by an organization; it is often a response to changing technology, market demands, and institutional pressures. Downsizing occurs in a large number of organizations, and it is increasingly being accepted as a legitimate management tool even in
On September 11, 2001, in the largest terrorist attack in history, four passenger planes were commandeered by terrorists and flown into the office buildings of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and the Pentagon, killing an estimated 3,000 people and injuring another 250. This tragic event was an extreme example of the many acts of
Chris Argyris and Donald Schon’s theory of action is a descriptive and normative framework that explains and prescribes behavior at the individual, group, and organizational levels. The intellectual roots of the theory of action are John Dewey’s theory of inquiry and Kurt Lewin’s formulations of action research. In particular, the theory of action aspires to
Total quality management (TQM) is an organizational activity that has received many labels since its widespread introduction to the American workplace in the early 1980s. It has been labeled as a comprehensive approach to management, a managerial philosophy, a set of tools for improving quality and customer focus, and an organizational development (OD) intervention that
Virtual organizations are composed of employees spread across different locations who perform different jobs and may also have different cultural identities. These dispersed and diverse employees are joined together by communication technologies such as the telephone, fax, e-mail, Internet, and instant messaging. Some employees of virtual organizations may work alone, functioning essentially as telecommuters. Others
The term workplace injury refers to any wound or damage to the human body as a consequence of an event or a series of events in the work environment. Events in this definition refer to the manner in which the injury was produced, such as a fall from a ladder or a series of events
It is probably reasonable to assume that most employees in the developed world go to work each day in the belief that they can return home safely at the end of their workday. Yet the available data from a number of industrialized countries over the last 15 years suggests that this assumption is questionable. Workplace
Lindner (1955) pinpointed 1913 as the date when psychological services were first offered in a U.S. correctional facility, specifically a women’s reformatory in the state of New York. Watkins (1992) identified the psychologist as Eleanor Rowland, who was asked to devise a test battery to identify offenders who would benefit from educational programs and be
Why do groups form and how do groups develop? In this entry, different perspectives on group development are examined. There are a number of reasons that people join groups. William Schutz theorized humans seek out groups in an effort to fulfill one or more of the following fundamental needs: (1) need for inclusion—desire for affiliation,
Repetition can make a simple behavior very powerful. Improving your physical health by exercising, increasing body strength by working out, or building up your potting skills in playing snooker can only be achieved by frequently executing these behaviors. However, people often struggle to maintain such regimes; sport schools typically see a decline in attendance a
Theories of health behavior change are needed to explain, predict, and improve self-regulation of physical activity. Such theories are being divided into continuum models and stage models. In continuum models, people are positioned along a range that reflects the likelihood of action. Influential predictor variables are identified and combined within one prediction equation. The goal
The health belief model, grounded in John Atkinson’s expectancy–value theory of achievement motivation, proposes that people are rational decision makers who, during decision making, take into consideration advantages and disadvantages associated with physical activity. The theory also posits that motivation is unidimensional and that the construct of intentions, which represents motivation, is one of the
Hedonic theory, or theory of psychological hedonism, is the idea that human behavior is motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain (or, more accurately, displeasure). Its origins can be traced to the beginnings of Western philosophy. Although its prominence within psychology waned during the 20th century, updated versions of hedonic theory
Heterosexism, homonegativism, and transprejudice are prejudices aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) people. These beliefs and actions are common in sport and negatively impact all participants, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This entry discusses common types of prejudices faced by LGBT sport participants, defines related terminology, and notes the effects
Researchers and practitioners have long believed that how people feel about and describe themselves can strongly influence motivated behavior in sport and exercise. Two key constructs studied in the sport and exercise psychology literature are self-esteem and self-concept. Since many people have argued that judgments about the self will influence the selection and maintenance of
The association of being at home with feelings of increased physical comfort, safety, and psychological well-being are reflected in a wealth of popular expressions and sayings, such as Home free; Home is where the heart is; East–west, home is best; Home sweet home; There’s no place like home. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the
Human factors (HF) is a multidisciplinary area that aims to understand and support the interactions between a human user and other elements of a sociotechnical system. Because human factors research addresses psychological, social, biological, and other task-related parameters of interactions between humans or between a human and a technical system in the context of work
Flow is a special psychological state of total absorption in a task. When in flow, athletes are fully focused on what they are doing, and this heightened attention is associated with a number of positive factors. Accompanying a focused mindset are factors such as knowing exactly what one is going to do and how one
In the year 2000, psychologists Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi were authors of an influential article proposing a new focus in the field of psychology: the positive psychology movement. Since that time, researchers have begun to explore the positive aspects or strengths of life such as satisfaction, optimism, happiness, and other positive emotions. Included in
The term hypnosis is often shrouded in misconception, myth, and apprehension because most views about hypnosis are influenced by entertainment stage shows. These shows often highlight participants’ engaging in strange and often embarrassing behaviors. However, hypnosis is consistently reported to be an effective and reliable technique in many domains (including medicine, dentistry, and psychology) for
The iceberg profile in sport is a visual representation of desirable emotional health status, characterized by low raw scores on the tension, depression, anger, fatigue, and confusion scales and above norms (the “water line”) on vigor as assessed by the Profile of Mood States (POMS). The iceberg profile as a metaphoric image has been employed
Exercise identity is a construct that captures the extent to which one sees exercise as a part of one’s self-concept, or who one is. This self-perception has been related to exercise behavior and may be of interest to researchers and practitioners who are invested in understanding and promoting exercise adherence. Adhering to recommended levels of
Imagery involves internally experiencing a situation that mimics a real experience without experiencing the real thing. As a conscious process that is deliberately employed by an athlete or exerciser to serve a specific function, it is distinctly different from daydreaming or just thinking about something. The terms mental rehearsal and visualization are sometimes used to
Implicit or self-theories of ability refer to individuals’ views on the stability and changeability of personal attributes. Two lay theories are argued to exist: an entity theory, whereby individuals consider qualities and attributes of the self or others to be fixed and trait like, and an incremental theory, whereby qualities and attributes are thought to
Research and application in sport and exercise psychology (SEP) has relied heavily on psychophysiological applications. Heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), skin conductance (SC), and measurement of brain activity through sophisticated techniques such as positron-emission tomography (PET), electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), and functional magneticresonance imaging (fMRI) are only a few of the many psychophysiological
During the early part of the 20th century, psychology was dominated by the school of thought known as behaviorism, which emphasized that psychological processes could only be examined at the level of observable behaviors. This approach assumed that all behaviors could be understood in terms of simple stimulus–response (S–R) relationships and that references to mental
Evidence suggests the challenges of injury recovery may not cease at the completion of athletes’ physical rehabilitation. Over the past decade, researchers have uncovered a range of psychosocial issues, challenges, and demands associated with the return to competition following injury. In this entry, athlete experiences returning to competition, the motivational issues surrounding return, and options
In sport, and sport coaching more specifically, the connection between coach and athlete is instrumental for optimal functioning, be it physical, psychological, mental, or social. In fact, there is strong evidence to suggest that success in sport is the product of the combined interrelating between the coach and the athlete. Athletes are unlikely to produce
The need for consistency in training, motor learning, technical preparation, and competition is well understood by coaches, athletes, and applied sport psychology (SP) consultants. A number of factors, however, can interfere with athletes’ ability to perform or learn at an appropriate level during training, technical preparation, and competition. The term interference addresses the decrease in
Interventions in the field of exercise or physical activity (PA) psychology focus on issues related to health rather than on issues related to performance in sport. Exercise, by definition, suggests a form of PA that is often structured and undertaken with the aim of improving fitness. However, health benefits can be obtained from more incidental
The hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (HMIEM) is a comprehensive theory that seeks to describe human motivation and its determinants and outcomes from a multilevel perspective. Its major premise is that in order to more completely understand the motivation of sport participants (e.g., athletes, coaches, referees, fans), one needs to consider their motivation
Knowledge about tasks and the environment is organized hierarchically in the human cognitive system, involving the diverse long-term memory (LTM) systems and working memory. Knowledge structures underlying task performance are fundamental elements of action control in sports. Experts’ skills are often based on the efficient access to relevant task knowledge as well as on enhanced
An established model of leadership in sports is Packianathan Chelladurai’s multidimensional model of leadership (MML). This model was the substance of a doctoral dissertation in management science. It represented a synthesis and reconciliation of the models of leadership found in the mainstream management literature. These preexisting models tended to focus more on either the leader
Shortly after World War II, Ralph Stogdill published a highly influential review paper in which he concluded that effective leadership is not derived through the expression of some set of personality traits but is invariably dependent on a range of situational factors that include the context in which leaders find themselves, as well as the
The core tenets of social cognitive theory (SCT) focus on the interrelationship among three sets of factors—namely personal, environmental, and behavioral. These factors are often described as being part of a reciprocal causal network whereby environmental, personal, and behavioral factors interact to determine a range of attitudinal and behavioral consequences. One of the key underpinning
An enduring question within the field of sport and performance psychology concerns the origins of effective leadership (as displayed by both coaches and athletes) and, in particular, whether displays of leadership can be attributed to the emergence of any underlying set of personality traits. In the early20th century, much research interest, especially within the field
Over the past 25 years, there has been considerable interest in the application of the transactional and transformational leadership paradigm to understanding the effects of leadership behaviors in relation to various psychological (e.g., motivation, self-confidence) and behavioral (e.g., individual and team performance) outcomes among those being led. Originally conceived within political and organizational settings, the
The ability to learn defines much that is unique about human behavior and underlies many aspects of sport and exercise psychology (SEP). Attempts to develop sweeping laws of learning have generally been unsuccessful, and it is unlikely that a universal theory of learning can be developed. Learning is often described as a process during which
The limbic system is composed of a group of brain structures associated with various functions, most notably emotion, cognition, fear, and motivation. There is considerable variation in what structures researchers consider to constitute the limbic system, though the two primary structures of the system are consistently noted to be the amygdala and hippocampus. It should
Control has been conceptualized in many different ways in psychological literature, but the prototype for control is the belief that an agent acting through some means can affect an outcome. Exercise and sport have been examined both as outcomes of personal control beliefs and as means to achieve health and fitness outcomes. However, the effects
Memory is a cognitive module in action organization in which information about objects, movements, events, environmental elements, and the action-related constellations between these entities are stored. Memory could be described as well as a process by which such information about the aforementioned elements are encoded, consolidated, stored, and recalled for use in attaining action goals.
A mental block is the inability to cognitively process thoughts or recall information. The effect can potentially interfere with performance. Sometimes confusion, lack of action, or indecision can occur with mental blocks. Performers of all ages, backgrounds, and activities can experience a mental block in varying degrees of severity. The block may be caused by
Mental rehearsal is an umbrella term that covers several techniques used by athletes and exercisers to improve performance. It happens covertly and without any actual movement and typically involves the representation of an action or behavior using nonverbal (e.g., imagery, observation) or verbal processes (e.g., self-talk). For example, an athlete may think (in the “mind’s