The current research addresses the psychological benefits of superstitious rituals in top sport, examining the circumstances under which top-class sportspersons are especially committed to enacting rituals prior to a game (ritual commitment). Consistent with the hypotheses, findings revealed that ritual commitment is greater when (a) uncertainty is high rather than low; and (b) importance of th...

the aim of this study was to predict expert archers’ performance on the basis of psychological factors such as arousal, activation, anxiety, motivation and personality characteristics with an emphasis on extraversion / introversion dimension. in this predictive correlation study, 34 expert archers were randomly selected as the sample of the study out of the archers of national team (statistical...

OBJECTIVE To assess indicative trends in the use of protective eyewear by Australian squash players and their attitudes towards its use since 1989. METHODS Data were extracted from three Australian surveys of squash players conducted in 1989, 1995, and 2000. Responses to directly similar attitudinal questions relating to protective eyewear use from each survey were compared. The proportion of...

This study arose as a result of two squash players, one male one female, seeking advice on how to improve their mental approach to playing. They both felt that their game suffered badly through too much anxiety. After preliminary interviews it was decided to use a programme of stress inoculation training to help them learn to control their anxiety. In order to obtain baseline measures of anxiet...