Psychology Gets in the Game

Sport, Mind, and Behavior, 1880-1960

Christopher D. Green, Ludy T. Benjamin

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780803222267
• eBook ISBN: 9780803226739
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Sports Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Although sport psychology did not fully mature as a recognized discipline until the 1960s, pioneering psychologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, making greater use of empirical research methodologies, sought to understand mental factors that affect athletic performance. Though the psychologists behind the studies described here worked independently of one another and charted their own distinct courses of inquiry, their works, taken together, provided the corpus of precedents and foundations on which the modern field of sport psychology was built. The essays collected in this volume tell the stories not only of these psychologists and their subjects but of the social and academic context that surrounded them, shaping and being shaped by their ideas.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction: The Origins of Sport Psychology
• 1. The Dawn of Sport Psychology in Europe, 1880–1930: Early Pioneers of a New Branch of Applied Science
• 2. E. W. Scripture: The Application of “New Psychology” Methodology to Athletics
• 3. Norman Triplett: Recognizing the Importance of Competition
• 4. Karl S. Lashley and John B. Watson: Early Research on the Acquisition of Skill in Archery
• 5. Psychology and Baseball: The Testing of Babe Ruth
• 6. An Offensive Advantage: The Football Charging Studies at Stanford University
• 7. Coleman Roberts Griffith: “Father” of North American Sport Psychology
• 8. Paul Brown: Bringing Psychological Testing to Football
• 9. Enhancing Performance in Sport: The Use of Hypnosis and Other Psychological Techniques in the 1950s and 1960s
• Conclusion: The “Proper” History of Sport Psychology
• Contributors
• Index