From why athletes choke to the power of superstitions, psychology plays a big role in athletics. In time for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, a story on Reuters examines recent research in sports psychology and how it affects performance. A recent study by Lysann Damisch of the University Tuebingen, for example, showed that people who thought they had luck on their side felt more confident and competent -- even if the luck was arbitrarily bestowed through an experimental "lucky ball." Other research has shown the power of self-affirmation in improving athletes' performance. A recent article in Social Psychological and Personality Science by Pascal Burgmer and Birte Englich examines how the perception of power impacts motor performance. In one experiment, they found that people primed with high-power outperformed control participants on a golf-putting task.
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From why athletes choke to the power of superstitions, psychology plays a big role in athletics. In time for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London,