Effect of psychological factors on the cognitive judgment in situations of sports contests : Especially from the players' judgement on the cause of ending the rally in volleyball games

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of emotions, cognition, personality and attitude on cognitive judgment by means of players' judgment on the play that ends the rally (the finishing play) in situations of volleyball games. The subjects number sixty-nine in all of four volleyball teams of women's colleges and universities. Each subject watches the video-tape, one set of the game of her own team, and is asked to write which play has ended the rally. Then, the written answers are checked in relationships with cognition of the opponent's strength, with her likes and dislikes of the opposing team, and with the results of two personally tests and one attitude test. The following conclusions are reached. 1. All the teams have strong tendencies for adjustment of emotions and cognition by attributing the opponent's points and rights rather to her own failure than to the opponent's success. 2. As to the personality factors, those who show the higher traits of objectivity make the more objective judgments, those who are the less self-centered take the more failures as their own, those who have the greater sense of inferiority show the greater tendency of ego-centric cognition, and those who get the less points in cultural characteristics test of British sports are the more willing to take failures as their own. Accordingly, the personality factors and the attitude factors toward sports influence cognition of the causes of points and rights. 3. The cognition of opponent's ability compared with the ability of her own team influences cognition of the causes of points and rights.