Importance Of Self-Confidence In Sports Performance

How useful are models of self-confidence in deepening our understanding of sporting performance?
Self-confidence is made up of two main components, self-efficacy and self-esteem. Self-efficacy is defined as the levels of confidence individuals have in their ability to execute courses of action or attain specific performance outcomes (Bandura 1997). Self-esteem is a term used to reflect a person’s own evaluation or appraisal of their own worth (Baumeister, 1993) It is believed that these aspects are important in deepening our understanding of sporting performance it is also believed that these two main aspects of self-confidence are vital in achieving a high level of sporting performance. Psychologists such as Bandura and Vealey have proposed

This means that athletes often need help to bring their psychological arousal to the right level. If there is too much psychological arousal then the individual may become either anxious about the game or have a high level of aggressiveness during the game as they are too worked up. If the athlete’s level of psychological arousal is too low then they may not perform their best as they aren’t worked up enough to care about the game. Banduras model of self-confidence has been applied to many areas, for example, coaches and teachers use these four techniques on pupils to try and increase their self-efficacy and therefore increase their sporting performance. There are many studies that have been carried out to support Banduras study on self-efficacy. One study was carried out by Barbi Law and Craig Hall to investigate the use of observational learning (vicarious experiences) and to examine its relationship to their self-efficacy beliefs to learn

Without the models from Psychologists such as Vealey and Bandura, we wouldn’t understand how important self-confidence is to ensuring a high level of performance in sport. Banduras four component model appears to be the most supported and accredited model. His model also helps coaches and teachers to understand how they can help their performers to reach a higher level of performance by helping them to increase their self-efficacy level. Vealey proposes a virtuous two component model however, the only evidence that has been gained, supporting the theory, was conducted by Vealey herself which may mean that there was a high level of bias as Vealey would have wanted the findings to back up her theory in order to make her seem like a better psychologist. To conclude, both theories have had a fundamental impact on our understanding of self-confidence and sporting performance but Banduras self-efficacy has had a larger impact as it has more evidence to support it and can be applied to more areas of performance than Vealey’s