Biological and Sports Psychology - Research Paper Example

?Running Head: Biological and Sports Psychology Biological and Sports Psychology [Institute’s Biological and Sports Psychology Why people act in a certain manner is one question that has existed since ancient times and its answer seems to lie in the study of psychology. Unlike other social sciences, psychology is a sphere of scientific study that keeps revolving around the conduct and mental processes taking place in an individual’s mind. In addition, psychology also specifies the relevance of such information to different fields of human activities that involves the day-to-day problems of an individual’s routine life and the various methods to cure bad health of mind. Moving onward, it is of great importance to be familiar with both biological psychology and sports psychologically distinctively in order to understand the relationship between the two. The term “biological psychology, also known as physiological psychology came under development during the 1990s” (Rosenzweig, Breedlove, & Watson, 2001). It, basically, puts emphasis on the connection between one’s behavior and his/her physiological system. Biological psychology investigates how our brainwork, conduct, and activities like locomotion, consciousness, attitude, sensuality, learning, and various physiological processes affect emotional disorders. In fact, a number of authors and psychologists believe that the domain of biological psychology goes beyond all the degrees of organism progress, from the microscopic stage to the basic stage, the integral stage, and the social stage (Rosenzweig, Breedlove, & Watson, 2001). Little by little, the field of biological/ physiological psychology is being introduced as behavioral neuroscience. According to experts, the reason behind this replacement is the fact that “biological psychologists have a comparatively greater reproduction in the Society for Neuroscience (SN) than in the American Psychological Association” (Davis, Rosenzweig, Becker, Sather, and Kimberly, 1988). Actually, biological psychologists are a part of the third largest group existing in SN. Despite of this change in reference, the functions and ambitions of psychologists trained in this field of study have not changed one bit- they still find it instrumental to make use of their basic fact-finding to give a reason for the different ways of conduct in physiological expression. Moreover, each one of their researches is accompanied by the belief that behind every behavioral occurrence, there is a complementing physical occurrence or a chain of occurrences. Furthermore, a physiological psychologist or a behavioral neuroscientist also makes sure to concentrate not only on the performance of the adrenal glands but also the physical processes that are engaged in sensitivity and perception. Physiological psychology is, without a doubt, related to physical organisms. However, one factor, which differentiates it from life sciences like physiology and biology, is its ability to make our behavior and experiences its cynosure. Everybody is familiar with the fact that chemicals and makeup of our nervous system have an influence on our behavior. Although, many psychologists believe that just brain structure and chemicals are not sufficient to explain the innumerable intricate human behavior and experiences. More psychological factors need to be taken into consideration include like the way an individual behaves in solitude or among hordes of people to name two. For instance, the psychologists who have studied dreaming convey that there is definitely a connection between our rapid eye movements during sleeping and dreaming. As per their study, the way our eyes move and the length of their movement definitely has an association with the incidents occurring in our dreams (Dement & Kleitman, 1957). Hence, it would not be wrong to say that the psychological changes are indeed responsible for one’s particular behavior and experiences (Myers, 2007). As far as sports psychology is concerned, it is one of the growing subfields in the sphere of psychology, which deals with the employment of psychological theories and research to sports and other various exercise-related activities. Simply put, sports psychology concentrates on the series of mental and behavioral processes of human beings inside the socio-cultural framework of a specific sport (Myers, 2007). This includes the involvement of social conduct like accomplishment of a goal or competition and sentiments affiliated with these behaviors: apprehension, inspiration, pride etc. Personality traits are one area of study, which plays a significant role in deciding how much an individual will participate in a certain sport. Apparently, personality traits comprising extraversion and introversion have proved to be most influential; people who give back traits of extraversion are usually demonstrative, sociable, energetic, friendly, and abrupt. They tend to attract a lot of public attention and love being in crowds instead of staying alone. On the contrary, individuals with traits of introversion are more constrained, composed, quiet, and realistic. They prefer working on their own instead of executing projects in groups and are more interested their own selves. However, it is not necessary that every individual can be categorized in one of these two categories because there are many people who possess characteristics, which reflect both extraversion and introversion (Myers, 2007). In a research, sportsmen from four different sports- one team sport and three individual sports were asked to attempt personality tests containing the “Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, which included measurement of susceptibility and determination, and the Global 5 Survey, which dealt with the calculation of extraversion, introversion, systemization, etc” (Dobersek & Bartling, 2007). Every individual’s personality test was checked with reference to the sport they participated in. The study demonstrated that there was a vast difference between the traits of the individuals in the two categories. Participants of sports team like volleyball showed characteristics affiliated to introversion like being trustworthy and mindful. On the other hand, participants of individual sports like tennis and golf were more lively and spontaneous (Dobersek & Bartling, 2007). These conclusions were of great interest because there are many researchers and scientists around the globe who would believe that the opposite of aforementioned findings would be true. Most of the research workers would say that participants of individual sports would show characteristics of introversion, whereas, team sport participants would reflect traits of extraversion. In a study comprising of the ”Eysenck Personality Inventory performed by Eagleton and his fellow workers” (2007), the researchers experimented with ninety team sport players, individual sport players and people who played no sports at all. They ended up discovering that team sport players showed more traits associated with extraversion like friendliness and spiritedness and individual sport players and non-players exhibited traits of introversion like being quiet and compliant (Eagleton et al., 2007). Studying the relationship between biological and sports psychology, one needs to comprehend the fact of no such psychologist on this planet who would deny emphasizing the noteworthy connection between the behavioral arrangement influenced by the brain and sports psychology. Similarly, this would relate to the association between the physiology concerning the functioning of the brain via its nervous system in various circumstances and sports psychology. For this reason, one element that we can utilize to form a link between biological psychology and sports psychology is the functioning of the brain during different events, which require specific action from both the sportsmen and women. Neuropsychology is commonly the name given to this condition. For example, while making a picture in your mind, you use your brain and this has been confirmed by a number of athletes. They all affirm that while visualizing the distance of the track, they store all the information in their brain, which provides them with mental awareness that further builds in them the feeling of confidence, well-being, and complacency. All these feelings, in turn, allow the athletes to display an amazing performance while playing. On the contrary, an athlete who just goes steps on the track without making any mental image of the field usually has a low self-confidence and has little or no control over the performance (Kalat, 2008). Majority of the sportsmen and sportswomen have a firm belief in them and always want to accomplish their goals. Athletes who involve their brain to visualize an event in their minds while participating in a certain sport are more likely to get victory rather than those who just hit the field and get practical without giving any other factor another thought. Visualization indeed improves the performance of the athletes and boosts up their adeptness and potency. In a nutshell, there is a thorough connection between the two fields; it is always an individual’s biological psychology that determines the attributes that the person manifests during sports, be it fear, confidence or courage to name a few. References Davis, H. P.; Rosenzweig, M. R.; Becker, L. A.; Sather and Kimberly, J. (1988). Biological psychology's relationships to psychology and Neuroscience. Volume 43, Issue 5, Pp. 359-371. Dement, W., and Kleitman, N. (1957). “The relation of eye movements during sleep to dream activity: An objective method for the study of dreaming.” Journal of Experimental Psychology. Vol. 53, Number 5, pp.339-346. Dobersek, U., and Bartling, C. (2007). “Connection between Personality Type and Sport.” American Journal of Psychological Research. Volume 4, Issue 1, pp.21-28 Eagleton, et al. (2007). “Extraversion and neuroticism in team sport participants, individual sport participants, and nonparticipants.” Perpetual and Motor Skills. Volume 105, Issue 1, pp. 265-275. Kalat, J. W. (2008). Introduction to Psychology. Wadsworth Publishing. Myers, D. G. (2007). Psychology. Worth Publishers. Rosenzweig, M. R., Breedlove, S. M., and Watson, N. V. (2001). Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavioral, Cognitive, and Clinical Neuroscience. Sinauer Associates. Read More