scholarly journals An inch away from being mentally tough: Performance bias in ratings of mental toughness

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin J. I. Schellenberg ◽  
Patrick Gaudreau

Are assessments of an athlete’s mental toughness influenced by how that athlete performs in a single moment in a game? We conducted three experimental studies to address this question and conclude that the answer is yes. In each study, sports fans (total N = 1,097) read vignettes that depicted a mentally tough basketball player, either by describing the player as having many mentally tough attributes (Study 1), or by stating that the player had been identified as being mentally tough by an expert sport psychologist (Studies 2 and 3). Participants then read that the player was about to take a championship-winning shot and were randomly assigned to learn that the shot had been either successful or unsuccessful. Moreover, in Studies 1 and 2 participants learned that the outcome had been either decisive (i.e., a “perfect swish” or an “air ball”) or indecisive (i.e., the ball hitting the backboard, then the rim and, eventually, either going or not going into the basket). In each study, despite learning that the athlete was very mentally tough, participants’ mental toughness ratings depended on whether or not the shot was successful. Ratings were also sensitive to the way in which an outcome was attained: ratings decreased in a linear pattern with the highest ratings after a decisive success, followed by an indecisive success, an indecisive failure, and the lowest ratings after a decisive failure. This research supports the criticism that evaluations of mental toughness are distorted by how an athlete performs in a single moment.

2021 ◽  
pp. 135910532199970
Author(s):  
Joanne A Rathbone ◽  
Tegan Cruwys ◽  
Jolanda Jetten

This project investigated how alternative non-stigmatising public health messages influence people’s health behaviours and well-being, relative to traditional stigmatising weight-loss messages. We conducted three experimental studies (total N = 1281) that compared traditional weight-loss messages to weight-neutral messages (Study 1), weight-inclusive messages (Study 2) and size acceptance messages (Study 3). Results revealed that public health messages have differential effects on health behaviours and well-being, depending on the audience’s BMI or perceived weight. However, campaigns that challenge weight stigma and promote body positivity have positive effects on some psychological indicators of health and well-being for people of all body sizes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Peetz ◽  
Michael Jeremy Adam Wohl ◽  
Anne E Wilson ◽  
Andrew Dawson

The idea of heritability may have consequences for individuals’ sense of self by connecting identity to the actions of others who happen to share genetic ties. Across seven experimental studies (total N=2,628), recalling morally bad or good actions by family members influenced individuals’ moral self among those who endorse a lay belief that moral character is genetically heritable, but not among those who did not endorse this belief (Study 1-5). In contrast, recalling actions by unrelated individuals had no effect, regardless of lay beliefs (Study 2, 5), the endorsement of other relevant lay beliefs did not moderate the effect of parent’s actions on self-judgments (Study 3). Individuals who endorsed heritability beliefs also chose less helpful responses to hypothetical helping scenarios if they had recalled unhelpful (vs. helpful) acts by a genetically-related family member (Study 5). Taken together, these studies suggest that lay beliefs in the role of genetics are important for self-perceptions.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coosje Lisabet Sterre Veldkamp ◽  
Chris Hubertus Joseph Hartgerink ◽  
Marcel A. L. M. van Assen ◽  
Jelte M. Wicherts

Do lay people and scientists themselves recognize that scientists are human and therefore prone to human fallibilities such as error, bias, and even dishonesty? In a series of three experimental studies and one correlational study (total N = 3,278) we found that the ‘storybook image of the scientist’ is pervasive: American lay people and scientists from over 60 countries attributed considerably more objectivity, rationality, open-mindedness, intelligence, integrity, and communality to scientists than other highly-educated people. Moreover, scientists perceived even larger differences than lay people did. Some groups of scientists also differentiated between different categories of scientists: established scientists attributed higher levels of the scientific traits to established scientists than to early-career scientists and PhD students, and higher levels to PhD students than to early-career scientists. Female scientists attributed considerably higher levels of the scientific traits to female scientists than to male scientists. A strong belief in the storybook image and the (human) tendency to attribute higher levels of desirable traits to people in one’s own group than to people in other groups may decrease scientists’ willingness to adopt recently proposed practices to reduce error, bias and dishonesty in science.


2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katariina Salmela-Aro ◽  
Bettina S. Wiese

Based on a set of three experimental studies (total N = 608), we examined how people appraise another person’s well-being and motivation in the work and family domains on the basis of knowledge of this other person’s goal system. Participants were introduced to the life situation of either a woman or a man belonging to a successful dual-career couple. This target person reported pursuing only work-related personal goals (work priority), only family-related personal goals (family priority) or both work- and family-related goals (balanced goal system). Participants were asked to appraise the target person’s life satisfaction as well as a number of work- and family-related attributes. Overall, as expected, target persons with a focus on work goals were perceived as higher on positive work-related attributes than the other groups, whereas the family-priority group was perceived as higher on positive family-related attributes. In addition, at least when judged by working adults, greater life satisfaction was attributed to persons with a balanced goal system than to those with a goal system focusing on either work or family goals.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Calderon ◽  
Erik Mac Giolla ◽  
Timothy John Luke ◽  
Lara Warmelink ◽  
Karl Ask ◽  
...  

Our aim was to examine how people communicate their true and false intentions. Based on construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010), we predicted that statements of true intentions would be more concretely phrased than statements of false intentions. True intentions refer to more likely future events than false intentions, they should be mentally represented at a lower level of mental construal. This should be mirrored in more concrete language use. Transcripts of truthful and deceptive statements about intentions from six previous experimental studies (total N = 528) were analyzed using two automated verbal content analysis approaches: a folk-conceptual measure of concreteness (Brysbaert, Warriner, and Kuperman, 2014) and linguistic category model scoring (Seih, Beier, & Pennebaker, 2017). Contrary to our hypotheses, veracity did not predict statements’ concreteness scores, suggesting that automated verbal analysis of linguistic concreteness is not a viable deception-detection technique for intentions.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Urban ◽  
Davina Vačkářová ◽  
Tomas Badura

Adaptation and mitigation are both essential components of strategies that aim to decrease risks associated with climate change. A number of existing studies, however, suggest that the two might be negatively affecting each other – climate adaptation might decrease mitigation efforts and vice versa. We have examined these effects in five experimental studies carried out in four countries (total N = 4,800) and have used Bayesian analysis to evaluate the strength of empirical support for such effects. We did not find any evidence that compensation between climate mitigation and adaptation takes place. On the contrary, we found some evidence, albeit rather weak, that prior focus on adaptation measures increases the subsequent tendency to engage in mitigation behavior; this effect is likely to be driven by an increase in worry about the impacts of climate change that results from a prior focus on climate adaptation. If anything, offering adaptation options may increase the tendency to mitigate climate change.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Li ◽  
Timothy Charles Bates

Mindset theory predicts that children’s IQ and school grades are positively linked to their belief that basic ability is malleable rather than fixed. We test this prediction in three experimental studies (total n = 624 individually-tested 10-12-year-olds). Two studies included active-control conditions to test effects of fixed-ability beliefs independent of motivation. In addition, we tested whether children’s own mindsets relate to real-life IQ, educational attainment in longitudinal analyses of school grades. Praise for intelligence had no significant effect on cognitive performance. Nor were any effects of mindset were found for challenging material. Active-control data showed that occasional apparent effects of praise for hard work on easy outcome measures reflected motivational confounds rather than effects of implicit beliefs about the malleability of intelligence (study 3, active control condition). Children’s own mindsets showed no relationship to IQ, school grades, or change in grades across the school year, with the only significant result being in the reverse direction to prediction (better performance in children holding a fixed mindset). Fixed beliefs about basic ability appear to be unrelated to ability, and we found no support for mindset-effects on cognitive ability, response to challenge, or educational progress.


Author(s):  
Peter Hogarth

This paper examines white spectatorship of the black athlete's body through an analysis of NBA basketball player Ron Artest's 2004 suspension. In examining the discourse surrounding the event, there emerges a covert ideology of simultaneous idealization and denigration of black athletes. While most in the sports world would claim to be colour-blind when evaluating talent or watching a game, the discourse surrounding Artest and the NBA in general seems to suggest that the invisible lens of white superiority shapes the perceptions of sports fans when viewing a predominantly black sport such as professional basketball.


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