Student Research Report: Athletes and Confidence-Is It Real?
In Spring 2022, students in Dr. Emily Stark’s Research Methods and Design course completed multiple hands-on data collection projects. They were also assigned a blog paper where they discussed one of the topics they chose to research and explained their findings to a general audience. The goal of this assignment was to give students an opportunity to explore a different form of writing from APA-style research papers. Some of these blog papers will be featured here to showcase the students’ findings. Please feel free to contact Dr. Stark through the contact form on this site for additional information about this course or the assignments used.
By Finley Sims
A common perception of collegiate athletes includes the idea of huge egos and high levels of confidence. Many wonder why athletes have such a swagger about them when, essentially, all they do is play a game in a society where that is difficult to make a living out of. The athletes could be failing their college classes and still act as if they own the world. As a collegiate athlete myself, I understand an athlete’s point of view as to why each of them possesses such qualities. My personal perception of my non-athlete peers was that on average, they visibly lacked the confidence that my athlete peers demonstrated. This was all based on the expression of confidence though, maybe my fellow classmates are just as confident as all the athletes on campus, just shown in a different way.
In 2009, Armstrong and Oomen-Early evaluated college athletes and non-athletes and found that the athletes had higher levels of social connectedness and self-esteem, while the non-athlete students had higher levels of depression. In 2019, Soulliard surveyed college athletes and non-athletes and found that the athletes had more positive reports of their body image than non-athletes. This research argues that collegiate athletes would, in fact, have higher levels of self-perceived attraction and confidence than non-athletes.
In PSYC-211W (Research Methods and Design), we got the opportunity to create a class survey to conduct research. My survey experiment gave me the opportunity to assess the self-perceptions of athletes and non-athletes in terms of attraction and confidence. The stereotype of false confidence is normally attached to athletes, but I wanted to know how true it was compared to your average college population. My hypothesis was that levels of attraction and confidence will coincide with each other, and collegiate athletes will have high self-ratings of attraction and confidence over non-athletes. I hypothesized this because of what I found from my research on the subject and because of my personal viewpoint after interacting with fellow collegiate athletes and non-athlete college students.
In the class survey, participants answered 65 questions pertaining to a range of topics, amongst those being a few centered on how the participant would rate themselves on an attraction and confidence scale. Specifically, the participant was asked on a scale of attraction, how attractive they rate themselves, and similarly, on the scale of confidence, how confident they would rank themselves. Both the attraction and confidence scales were numbered 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest possible rating and 10 being the highest possible rating. While there were other questions relating to attraction and confidence, I focused on just those two questions to keep the experiment simple. What I found was that on the scale of attraction, participants rated themselves an average of 6, and on the scale of confidence, participants responded with an average of 6 as well. The results show that people are most likely to put corresponding ratings down on the attraction and confidence scales and that collegiate athletes have an overall higher confidence rating of themselves than non-athletes.
My hypothesis was correct, and one of the reasons I believe is because of the attitude sports require to succeed. To maintain a high level of competitiveness and win games, there need to be high levels of confidence and self-esteem to accompany that. You must believe you are as good, if not better, than your opponents to be able to compete with and beat them. Those lacking in confidence and self-esteem typically find themselves more unsuccessful in sports and therefore less likely to play at the collegiate level. Another reason why athletes have higher confidence and attraction levels is because when someone takes part in multiple areas of expertise, they have a higher likelihood of success in one of those areas. At the college level in academics, one must be considered very well versed in intelligence and knowledge, so one could assume they are at some level of expertise and are expected to show success at some point throughout their college years. At the college level in sports, one must be very fluid and experienced in their sport, again one could assume that would be some level of expertise in that field. College athletes then have two areas of expertise they are participating in daily, and therefore have a higher chance of success than a non-athlete college student, who only has school as their area of expertise. I am not considering other activities in the areas of expertise because none start as young as sports and school or reach the level of competition that both of those maintain. With more success comes more validation and affirmation, which increases confidence and self-image. So, the higher the likelihood of success in an area of expertise, the higher the likelihood that a person’s confidence and self-image will grow and expand. Athletes start out with a certain level of confidence, and it continues to grow as they experience more success, academically or athletically.
References
Armstrong, S., & Oomen-Early, J. (2009). Social connectedness, self-esteem, and depression symptomatology among collegiate athletes versus nonathletes. Journal of American College Health, 57(5), 521-526. http://dx.doi.org/10.3200/JACH.57.5.521-526
Soulliard, Z. A., Kauffman, A. A., Fitterman-Harris, H., Perry, J. E., & Ross, M. J. (2019). Examining positive body image, sport confidence, flow state, and subjective performance among student athletes and non-athletes. Body Image, 28, 93-100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2018.12.009