Sport in the perspective of Barkerian Psychological ecology

Gerhard Kaminski

University of Tuebingen, Germany

Citation

Kaminski, G. (2009). Sport in the perspective of Barkerian Psychological ecology. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 40(1), 50-78.

Abstract

The first part of this paper gives an overview of (Barkerian) psychological ecology, its origin, its classical research tradition, and its further developments up to the present. Roger G. Barker aspired to complement (mainly) experimental psychology by establishing a psychological ecology modeled on biological ecology. In a field station (1947-1972) his research group applied two essentially different approaches of “naturalistic” methodology aimed at describing and analysing people’s everyday behaviour in a small rural town. – How could this research perspective and tradition be relevant to sport psychology? The second part of the paper tries to answer these questions, primarily by attempting to locate Barkerian psychological ecology within the network of sport sciences. Reflecting on one of sport psychology’s major tasks (producing “if-then-knowledge” aimed at improving sport performance) reveals that psychological ecology’s relevance has a fundamentally different emphasis. The analysis of various examples demonstrates how this peculiar kind of relevance can be utilised.

Keywords: Behaviour setting, Ecological representativeness, Ecological validity, Psychological