Social support in sport psychology
Authors: Rees, T.
Pages: 505-515
ISBN: 9781138022423
Abstract:Kevin Durant’s acceptance speech perfectly encapsulates the power of support. It goes beyond merely thanking people for their support, as is often seen in post-competition interviews. It also speaks to the evidence from sport psychology that athletes consistently cite social support as a key ingredient of their success (Connaughton, Wadey, Hanton, & Jones, 2008; Fletcher & Sarkar, 2012; Gould, Guinan, Greenleaf, Medbery, & Peterson, 1999; Kristiansen & Roberts, 2010; Rees & Hardy, 2000). Indeed, such has been the proliferation of research in sport psychology into this important topic that social support is now linked with a host of important variables in sport: enhanced coping with organizational stressors (Kristiansen, Murphy, & Roberts, 2012), return from injury (Carson & Polman, 2012; Mitchell, Evans, Rees, & Hardy, 2014; Podlog, Wadey, Stark, Lochbaum, Hannon, & Newton, 2013; Rees, Mitchell, Evans, & Hardy, 2010), psychological resilience (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2012; Morgan, Fletcher, & Sarkar, 2013; Sarkar & Fletcher, 2014), self-confidence (Rees & Freeman, 2007), athletes’ self-talk (Zourbanos, Hatzigeorgiadis, Goudas, Papaioannou, Chroni, & Theodorakis, 2011), lower levels of burnout (Raedeke & Smith, 2004), and performance (Freeman & Rees, 2008; Rees, Hardy, & Freeman, 2007; Rees & Freeman, 2009, 2010).
Source: Scopus