Intrinsic, extrinsic & achievement motivation

Motivation is the drive to start and persist with a behaviour. Two broad kinds:

• Intrinsic — the drive comes from within: enjoyment, satisfaction, pride in mastering a skill.
• Extrinsic — the drive comes from outside: tangible rewards (medals, money) or intangible ones (praise, recognition).

Achievement motivation (developed by Atkinson and McClelland) explains how much a person seeks out competitive, evaluative situations. It weighs two personality tendencies:

• Need to achieve (NACH) — driven to succeed, welcomes challenge, not afraid of failure; shows approach behaviour.
• Need to avoid failure (NAF) — anxious about failing, avoids tasks where they might be judged; shows avoidance behaviour.

Read it as a balance: a person's tendency to approach a challenge depends on NACH minus NAF, plus the incentive and probability of success. NACH types prefer tasks with a roughly 50/50 chance — a genuine test.

Spot the NACH performer

Arousal & performance

Arousal is the level of physiological and psychological activation. Three theories describe how it affects performance:

• Drive theory (Hull): performance rises in a straight line with arousal. As arousal grows, the dominant response emerges — for an expert that is the correct, well-grooved skill; for a novice it may be a flawed one.
• Inverted-U hypothesis (Yerkes-Dodson): performance is best at a moderate, optimal level of arousal. Too little (under-aroused) or too much (over-aroused) both reduce it, giving an upside-down U.
• Catastrophe theory (Fazey & Hardy): like the inverted-U, but when cognitive anxiety is high and arousal passes a critical threshold, performance does not tail off gently — it drops dramatically (a catastrophe).

Which arousal theory?

Tap a description, then tap the theory it belongs to.

What triggers a catastrophe?

State, trait, somatic & cognitive anxiety

Anxiety is a negative emotional response to a perceived threat. Two useful splits:

• Trait anxiety (A-trait) — an enduring personality tendency to see many situations as threatening. State anxiety (A-state) — the temporary worry felt in one specific situation (e.g. a penalty).
• Somatic anxiety — the physiological signs: raised heart rate, sweating, nausea, muscle tension. Cognitive anxiety — the mental signs: worry, negative thoughts, loss of concentration.

Measuring it: Martens' SCAT (Sport Competition Anxiety Test) is a questionnaire that estimates a performer's competitive trait anxiety. Anxiety can also be measured by observation and physiological readings (heart rate, hormones).

Somatic or cognitive?

Theories of aggression

Aggression is intent to harm outside the rules. Four theories, four psychologists:

• Instinct theory (Lorenz): aggression is an innate, biological drive that builds up and must be released (catharsis) — sport as a safe outlet.
• Frustration-aggression hypothesis (Dollard et al.): blocking a goal creates frustration, which leads to aggression; if the aggression is released, it is cathartic.
• Aggressive-cue hypothesis (Berkowitz): frustration creates only a readiness to be aggressive; aggression follows only if learned cues are present (an opponent, an object, a situation associated with aggression).
• Social learning theory (Bandura): aggression is learned by observing and imitating role models, especially when their aggression is reinforced.

Berkowitz refines Dollard: frustration alone is not enough — the environment must supply a cue for aggression to appear, which is why the same frustration produces aggression in some settings but not others.

Personality theories

How stable is personality, and how far does it predict behaviour?

• Trait theories (Eysenck): personality is made of stable, largely inherited traits — Eysenck mapped them on extroversion–introversion and neuroticism–stability. The Type A / Type B idea also treats personality as a fixed type (A = impatient, competitive; B = relaxed).
• Social learning (Bandura): personality/behaviour is learned from others by observation and imitation — it changes with the situation.
• Interactionist (Hollander): behaviour is a product of the person and the environment. Lewin captured this as B = f(P, E) — behaviour is a function of personality and environment.

Why it matters: the interactionist view is the most widely accepted because it explains why a calm person may act out of character in a heated derby — the situation interacts with their traits.

Attribution theory (Weiner)

Weiner explained how performers account for success and failure using reasons placed on two main dimensions (plus a third):

• Locus of causality — is the cause internal (ability, effort) or external (task difficulty, luck)?
• Stability — is the cause stable (ability, task difficulty) or unstable (effort, luck)?
• Controllability — is the cause within the performer's control (effort) or not (luck)?

Attributions shape future motivation. Repeatedly blaming failure on stable, internal, uncontrollable causes ("I'm just no good") can create learned helplessness — the belief that failure is inevitable. The self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute success internally (my ability) but failure externally (bad luck), which protects self-esteem.

Coaching use: encourage attribution to effort (internal but unstable and controllable). "You lost because you didn't train enough" keeps improvement in the athlete's hands and avoids learned helplessness.

Place the attribution

Self-confidence & self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is the belief you have in your ability to succeed at a specific task. Bandura identified four sources that raise it:

• Performance accomplishments — past success at the task (the strongest source).
• Vicarious experience — watching others of similar ability succeed.
• Verbal persuasion — encouragement from a coach, team-mate or crowd.
• Emotional / physiological arousal — interpreting one's own arousal as readiness rather than fear.

Vealey's model of sport confidence adds that confidence in sport comes from trait sport confidence and the competitive orientation a performer brings to an objective sporting situation, which then feeds state sport confidence and performance in a continuous loop.

Coaching tip: the surest way to build efficacy is to engineer early success (performance accomplishments) — set achievable targets before harder ones.

Match the concept to its theorist

Tap a concept on the left, then the psychologist who proposed it.

Group dynamics, leadership & social facilitation

Steiner's model of group productivity:

• Faulty processes are co-ordination losses (poor teamwork) and motivational losses. Social loafing — some members give less effort in a group when their contribution is not identified.
• The Ringelmann effect — average individual effort falls as group size increases (first shown in a rope-pulling task).
• Leadership — Chelladurai's multi-dimensional model: effective leadership and satisfaction depend on how well the leader's required, preferred and actual behaviour match, shaped by the situation, leader and members. Leaders may be autocratic or democratic, and prescribed (appointed) or emergent (from within the group).
• Social facilitation (Zajonc): the presence of others raises arousal, which strengthens the dominant response — helping experts on well-learned skills but hindering novices. Cottrell refined this: it is evaluation apprehension (the fear of being judged), not mere presence, that drives the effect.

Crowd effect on an expert

The big ideas to know

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