Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Nicholls, 1992) advocate the importance of cultivating a task-oriented climate in which
athletes are taught to value effort, skill-mastery and intrinsic motivation rather than an
ego-oriented climate in which the goal of defeating others is paramount. Theoretically,
task-oriented motivational climates can be cultivated by the provision of coaching
feedback that focuses on athletes’ performance relative to self-referenced criteria of
achievement and improvement. The value of an ego-oriented climate should not be
dismissed completely, however. Thus Hardy, Jones and Gould (1996) argued that some
degree of ego involvement is a necessary prerequisite of success for any elite athlete.
Having sketched the nature, measurement and predictions of achievement goal theory,
it is time to evaluate its contribution to motivational research in sport. In Box 2.3, we
present a brief critical appraisal of this theory.

Box 2.3 Thinking critically about. achievement goal theory in sport

According to Duda and Hall (2001), achievement goal theory is “a major theoretical
paradigm in sport psychology” (p. 417). Although this claim may be true, the theory itself
suffers from a number of limitations which can be specified as follows.
First, as Duda and Hall (2001) acknowledged, achievement goal theorists are rather
vague about the ways in which athletes’ goal orientations interact with situational factors
such as perceived motivational climate in order to determine motivational behaviour. In
addition, a preoccupation with task- and ego-oriented goal orientations has led to the
neglect of other possible goal perspectives in sport such as affiliative needs. A third
problem with achievement goal theory was noted by Kremer and Busby (1998) in
relation to understanding participant motivation—the question of why some people
persist with physical activity whereas other people drop out of it. In particular, these
authors pointed out that it is somewhat naïve to expect that task and ego orientations do
not overlap considerably in real life. For example, whereas some people may initially
involve themselves in physical activity for task-oriented reasons (such as losing weight),
they may learn to love such activity for its own sake over time. In other words, people’s
motivational orientation is neither fixed nor static. A fourth problem with achievement
goal theory in sport psychology is that although there have been many studies on athletes’
goal orientations, there have been few studies on athletes’ “goal states”—or the type of
achievement goals that athletes pursue in specific sport situations (Harwood and Biddle,
2002), Finally, as Harwood (2002) pointed out, nomothetic measures of goal orientation
such as the TEOSQ (Duda and Nicholls, 1992) are often used inappropriately for the
purposes of quantitative ideographic assessment of individual athletes even though such
tests are poor at identifying the differences between high, moderate and low task-
orientation scores. Furthermore, there is some evidence (Harwood, 2002) that athletes’
goal orientations may be more context-specific than had previously been realised. For
example, an athlete’s goal orientation in training may differ significantly from that which
s/he displays in competitive settings. Also, as Roberts (2001) acknowledged, athletes may
shift their goal orientation within a game. To illustrate, a tennis player may begin a match
with the ego-related aim of defeating an opponent but may soon realise that this will
probably prove impossible. So, gradually, this player may choose instead to disregard the
score and use the game as an opportunity to practise some new technical skills that s/he

Sport and exercise psychology: A critical introduction 44