How Coaches, Parents, and Peers Influence Motivation in Sport

Abstract

When you practice and compete in sport, there are other people involved who support you in some way: coaches, parents, friends, and opponents. These people can influence how you feel about playing sport, through their actions, reactions, emotional expressions, and language. Our motivation in sport is not as simple as “more-v-less,” but rather we experience a whole range of motivating/demotivating factors at the same time. Some motivators seem to feel natural and come from within us, while others seem to come from outside ourselves—like prizes, punishments, and peer pressure. We can be motivated toward an activity (“I want to do that!”), or away from it (“I do not want to do that!”). We can define success and failure in various ways, too. For example, we can compare ourselves to others (“Did I win?” “How did I rank?”), or we can strive for learning and improvement (“I finally did it, it worked!”). The motivational climate in sport refers to the way people around you influence these aspects of motivation.