tendency to apply the same rating to all items regardless of the content involved)?Having analysed how mental imagery processes have been measured in sport performers,
we should now consider how they are used by athletes.
Athletes’ use of mental imageryPeople use mental imagery for many purposes in everyday life. To illustrate, Kosslyn,
Seger, Pani, and Hillger (1990) asked a sample of university undergraduates to keep a
diary or log of their imagery experiences over the course of a week. Results revealed that
imagery was used for such functions as problem solving (e.g., trying to work out in
advance whether or not a large suitcase would fit into the boot of a car), giving and
receiving directions (e.g., using mental maps to navigate through the physical
environment), recall (e.g., trying to remember where they had left a lost object), mental
practice (e.g., rehearsing what to say in an important interview on the way to work) and
motivation (e.g., using images of desirable scenes for mood enhancement purposes). This
type of research raises several interesting questions. How widespread is imagery use
among athletes (see review by Munroe, Giaccobi, Hall and Weinberg, 2000)? Do elite
athletes use it more frequently than less proficient counterparts? For what specific
purposes do athletes employ imagery?
Before we explore empirical data on these questions, let us consider briefly some
anecdotal reports and textbook accounts of reports on imagery use in sport. In this regard,
many testimonials to the value of imagery have emerged from interviews with, and
profiles on, athletes in different sports. For example, current and former world-class
performers such as Michael Jordan (basketball), Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus (golf),
John McEnroe and Andre Agassi (tennis), George Best and David James (football) all
claim to have seen and felt themselves performing key actions successfully in their
imagination before or during competition (Begley, 2000). As critical thinkers, however,
we should be careful not to be too easily influenced by anecdotal testimonials. After all,
as a critic once remarked acerbically about another psychologist’s work which was
heavily based on colourful examples, the plural of anecdote is not data! In other words,
examples do not constitute empirical evidence. As I explained in Chapter 1, psychologists
are wary of attaching too much importance to people’s accounts of their own mental
processes simply because such insights are often tainted by biases in memory and
distortions in reporting. For example, athletes may recall more cases of positive
experiences with imagery (i.e., occasions on which their visualisation coincided with
enhanced performance) than negative experiences with it (where visualisation appeared
to have no effect).
Turning to the textbooks, many applied sport psychologists have compiled lists of
alleged uses of imagery in sport (see Box 5.6).
Using imagination in sport: mental imagery and mental practice in athletes 145