Self-efficacy, risk taking and performance in rock climbing

Coordination in Climbing: Effect of Skill, Practice and Constraints Manipulation

“…Psychological factors are an important individual constraint in climbing [54,103,104] and their impact on coordination behaviours has been previously raised [37,55,84,105,106], although rarely measured directly. Sanchez et al [54] reported movement data captured during a climbing championship for the same on-sight lead route.…”

Use of Psychological Skills by Risk Sport Athletes

“…Later inquiries (e.g., Goma-i-Freixanet, 1991) attempted to establish a working personality profile of risk sport athletes. Currently, risk sport athletes are characterized as individuals who are drawn to new and novel experiences, high in sensation and arousal seeking, and possess a heightened degree of situational-specific confidence in their ability to overcome sport-related adversity (Celsi, Rose, & Leigh, 1993;Diehm & Armatas, 2004;Llewellyn, Sanchez, Asghar, & Jones, 2008). Recent investigations have explored the combination of personality traits such as extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism (Castanier, Le Scanff, & Woodman, 2010), as well as harm avoidance, reward dependence, and self-directedness (Monastero et al, 2012), the impact of risk sport on the regulation of one's affect (Castanier, Le Scanff, & Woodman, 2011;Woodman, Cazenave, & Le Scanff, 2008), the connection with nature that participation in risk sport offers its athletes Varley, 2011), and the capacity to extend one's perception of control .…”

Are perceived comparative risks realistic among high‐risk sports participants?

“…Social psychologists and sociologists have investigated participants' perceived vulnerability, as well as their self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) in the presence of the risk; that is, their confidence in their perceived abilities to manage risk. Studies have shown that, despite evidence of hazard in their sports, participants in such activities as mountaineering (Delle Fave, Bassi, & Massimini, 2003;Demirhan, 2005), rock climbing Llewellyn, Sanchez, Asghar, & Jones, 2008), skydiving (Laurendeau, 2006;Moen & Rundmo, 2005), kayaking (Slanger & Rudestam, 1997), and adventure racing (Schneider, Butryn, Fürst, & Masucci, 2007) trust themselves to negotiate risky situations and believe in their abilities to cope with risk. These studies, however, have not considered whether participants express a comparative optimism, the perception that they are at lower risk of getting injured or are better able to manage risks than their peers (Harris & Middleton, 1994;Shepperd, Carroll, Grace, & Meredith, 2002), There exist ethnographic-based studies which have suggested that high-risk sportspersons might deny their vulnerability by comparing themselves to other athletes (Donnelly, 2004;Laurendeau, 2006;Schneider et al,, 2007), For instance, skydivers tended to attribute casualties of accidents to others not possessing "the right stuff" (Lyng, 1990, p, 859) or to poor judgements peers make regarding safety (Laurendeau, 2006, p, 596), According to Donnelly (2004), using social comparison allows sportspersons not only to believe that they are physically safe within their own perception of risk but to intensify their feeling of success as they negotiate risk as well.…”