Author(s)

Muhammad Badarnee¹, Baraa Aslih¹, Smadar Goldman², Shulamith Kreitler^1*

¹School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
²Studio Bazel, Tel-Aviv, Israel.

The major problems identified in the assessment of motivation for sport are using questionnaires with multiple scales whose results shift across contexts, adding to the predictions variables of other psychological factors, and especially replacing actual behavior assessments by intents to participate in sport and self-reports which do not represent behavior. The cognitive orientation approach to motivation enables prediction of actual behavior by assessing the following four types of beliefs: about oneself, others and reality, norms and goals. It was hypothesized that intents and self-reports of sport behavior are related only to one belief type, which is beliefs about oneself. The underlying assumption was that individuals engaged in sport experience a kind of commitment to the action they do so that they may try to bring their beliefs about self in concordance with the behavior. Two samples were used: a Jewish one (n = 148) and an Arab one (n = 319). The participants responded to a demographic questionnaire, a questionnaire describing their physical activity and a cognitive orientation questionnaire of motivation for sport which assessed four belief types. Regression analyses of the four belief types as predictors of sport activity showed that in both samples as hypothesized only beliefs about self had a significant contribution. The implications in regard to assessing motivation for sport and training are discussed.

Motivation for Sport, Cognitive Orientation, Self Beliefs, Commitment

Badarnee, M. , Aslih, B. , Goldman, S. and Kreitler, S. (2020) Motivation for Sport: The Cognitive Orientation. Psychology, 11, 1559-1573. doi: 10.4236/psych.2020.1110099.