This chapter addresses the key principles of sport, exercise, and performance psychology. It reflects the broadening of sport psychology studies to encompass more widespread human performance research. The topic of decision making has been covered in psychology, economics, and motor learning but addressed very sparsely in sport, exercise, and performance psychology. Rational decision making requires defining the problem, identifying criteria, weighing those criteria, generating alternative solutions, and ultimately computing the optimal decision. The chapter introduces the literature on decision making and provides examples of factors that influence the choices people make. The decision to act, move, or what move to make is decided in the response selection stage, and the final stage is when one’s brain and muscles are organized to make the actual move. The key to improve the decision-making over time is to increase personal awareness of own limitations and keep learning and collecting information from reliable sources.

This chapter presents a case study on performance dysfunction in the case of a 21-year-old African American female basketball player entering her senior year at a major Division I-level university. She described regret about not working out harder during the off-season, which she blamed for a poor start to her current season. In addition, she also reported feeling a great deal of worry over the possibility that she may have a poor season and ruin her chance to be drafted in the first round of the WNBA entry draft. According to the case formulation model, there are 10 elements that are necessary to consider prior to making an intervention decision contextual performance demands; skill level; situational demands; transitional and developmental issues; psychological characteristics/performance and nonperformance schemas; attentional focus; cognitive responses; affective responses; behavioral responses; and readiness for change and level of reactance.

This chapter and the intervention protocol that follows seek to better understand and ultimately influence human performance through understanding how internal processes interact with external demands. Many factors determine the effectiveness of human performance. The myriad of factors contributing to functional as well as dysfunctional human performance can be summarized as follows: instrumental competencies, environmental stimuli and performance demands, dispositional characteristics, and behavioral self-regulation. The chapter presents the model of functional and dysfunctional human performance that involves three broad yet interactive phases, namely performance phase, postperformance response, and competitive performance. The professional literature in both clinical and cognitive psychology suggests that individuals develop an interactive pattern of self and other mental schemas. The accumulated empirical evidence has led to similar findings in studies across many forms of human performance. Chronic performance dysfunction is much more likely to be associated with an avoidant coping style.

This chapter presents a case study on performance development with the case of a man who reported that he had been “ultra successful” in every facet of his business life and was happily married and living with his wife of three years in a large suburban home. He described himself as “feeling stuck”, which he described as the belief that he had gone as far as he could go without improving in fundamental areas in his life. The consequences of the avoidant behaviors led him to feel quite overwhelmed. Preintervention psychological functioning was assessed with a standard semi-structured interview and three self-report measures selected based on specific processes that appeared most likely to be relevant to the performer’s referral issue. The measures utilized included the Young Schema Questionnaire-Short Form, the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-Revised, and the Profile of Mood States.

This chapter highlights the various roles that a forensic psychologist might play during the course and within the context of a criminal trial. It discusses the ethics of expert testimony, interrogation of suspects, and the psycholegal issues presented in criminal matters. The chapter presents cases made popular by television and social media to illustrate some of these issues. The cases highlighting these points are the murder trials of Jody Arias in Arizona and Brendan Dassey, who was living in Wisconsin but had his case deliberated in federal court. The chapter features profiles of two forensic psychologists. Although both work in the criminal justice system, their roles are quite different, and each has a position integral to the system. Interviews with Drs. Adam Yerke and Trisha Elloyan provide insight into the professional lives of a sex offender evaluator and a prison psychologist, respectively.

This chapter focuses on the commonality between domestic violence and other forms of violence against women. There are at least two major types of cultural issues that need to be understood in the United States by researchers and service providers: first, the cultural issues of those with less access to resources and the dominant cultural privileges, and second, the cultural issues of those who have emigrated to the United States from other countries, whether legally or illegally. Given the attention to cultural diversity issues in providing clinical services, there is a body of literature that deals with how these services, particularly medical and psychological treatments, must accommodate to cultural differences. Some researchers suggest that women of color in domestic violence relationships are less likely to seek help from mental health professionals because they perceive the helpers as insensitive to the racial and cultural context of their lives.

This chapter examines the impact of the psychosocial work environment on the mental health of people who work. It examines the impact of a different category of workplace hazards, namely, psychosocial hazards. In examining the research bearing on the impact of psychosocial working conditions on mental health, the chapter is largely confined to higher quality longitudinal studies, many of which have been population, based, and have controlled for workers’ psychological functioning at the first wave of data collection. Occupational health psychology (OHP)-related research on mental health has focused largely on the relation of psychosocial working conditions to three types of outcomes: psychological distress, depression and burnout. Social support fits well with research concerning the relation of psychosocial workplace factors to mental health because coworker and supervisor support are psychosocial workplace factors. OHP researchers face a number of challenges when studying the mental health impact of psychosocial working conditions.

This chapter examines the coining of the term “occupational health psychology”. It also examines the historical antecedents of OHP as well as its institutional history. The chapter focuses on the psychological impact of combat on soldiers in two world wars. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, n. d.), occupational health psychology (OHP) involves “the application of psychology to improving the quality of work life, and to protecting and promoting the safety, health and well-being of workers”. OHP is quintessentially interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary research requires robust institutional support. An institutional development affected the course of the social sciences. Public health-oriented OHP researchers have been intent on characterizing objective features of the psychosocial work environment that affect the health of workers. OHP involved the application of psychological theory and knowledge to prevent, diagnose, and treat “physical disease and dysfunction” that arise from workplace conditions.