Paul J. McCarthy

• Psychology
• Senior Lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University

Young athletes have become an increasingly important client group for sport psychology practitioners and a population whose physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development should be carefully considered by a practitioner when delivering their services (Visek et al., 2009). The aim of this British Psychological Society (BPS) Division of Sport...

Resilience in sport is growing as a topic of investigation but comparatively less focus is placed on how resilience develops in athletes. This study explored sporting resilience development in elite athletes over time using grounded theory. Participants included 10 competitive-elite athletes (5 men and women) who scored high, competing in individua...

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic had wide-ranging negative impacts on mental health. The pandemic also placed extraordinary strain on frontline workers who were required to continue working and putting themselves at risk to provide essential services at a time when their normal support mechanisms may not have been available. This paper presents...

Although applied sport psychologists are supporting young athletes drawing on experiential evidence of what works, there is a lack of understanding regarding how to effectively help young athletes enhance their wellbeing, long-term development, and performance. The aim of the current study was to gain insights into the consultancy process from accr...

Resilience in sport is growing as a topic of investigation but little is known about how resilience develops in athletes. This study explored sporting resilience development in elite athletes over time using grounded theory. Participants from diverse cultural contexts were screened using Brief Resilience Scale (Smith et al., 2008). Sample included...

What sport psychology practitioners say, how they say it, and why they said it are core determinants of successful practice. As such, reflective practice is critical to practitioners (continued) professional development. This paper explains and illustrates a reflective tool for sport psychology practitioners – the process report. Process reports ar...

Life-span perspectives illustrate the critical features of development that clients experience; however, little evidence exists to illustrate how to integrate these approaches or use them in sport and exercise contexts. Attending to a clients’ developmental stage is a critical component of ethical and effective professional practice. We present an...

Brief cognitive behavior therapy is planned brief therapy designed to influence a specific target behavior (e.g., sport performance) with the lowest investment of cost and time. We report a brief cognitive behavior therapy intervention delivered to improve serve performance in county-level youth tennis players (three male and one female; M age = 14...

We systematically reviewed resilience research in sport and exercise psychology. Sample included 92 studies comprising empirical qualitative and quantitative studies, mixed-method studies, review studies and conceptual/theoretical studies on psychological resilience in sports context. From the findings, we synthesized an evidence-based sport-specif...

Anger is an emotion that is frequently associated with a bad reputation. Anger has proven to play an effective role in certain athletic achievements; however, it is unknown which sport and gender have the athletes whose performance is most influenced by anger. In this study, we administered the STAXI-2 to determine relationships between gender and...

Gender bias is a significant issue within sport and exercise; this bias can have prominent influences on performance and developmental issues. The extent of literature surrounding bias is vast. However, the cause of bias is rarely explored. The present study aimed to investigate the effect personality has on gender bias within sports; this consider...

Sports coaches encourage us to be active, alert, and to get things done quickly; they also advise us to relax, be patient, and do things slowly. With these changing instructions, we need a system to do things at our own pace. In sport psychology, we call this system goal setting. Goal setting means establishing a target that you want to achieve. Wh...

This case study analyzes, synthesizes, and tests a person-centered approach by a trainee sport and exercise psychologist working with a male amateur distance runner. The aim of applying a person-centered approach was to enhance the athlete’s understanding of himself, enable him to make sense of his experience, and facilitate personal growth. This c...

In this case study, we report the experiences and reflections of a female trainee sport and exercise psychologist who navigated the dismissal of a management team and COVID-19 in a professional football club. The trainee delivered an educational intervention to a group of 10 players transitioning from a youth academy to the first team at a professi...

This study retrospectively explored perceptions of coach, parent and peer motivational influences across athlete development. Four investment stage football players (M age = 18.5 years, SD = 0.6) with an average of 13 (SD = 1.4) years footballing experience, and four of their parents, were interviewed to investigate their perceptions of coach, pare...

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health issue which has severely disrupted and deferred several landmark international sporting competitions. Like the general population, athletes have faced direct psychological consequences from COVID-19 in addition to cancelation of events, loss of support, lack of training, loss of earnings, hypervigilance, and...

This case reports a brief attribution-retraining (AR) intervention with youth tennis players. Athletes were struggling to maintain emotional control, resulting in problematic on-court behavior (e.g., racket throwing). The intervention used a Think Aloud protocol and AR across five key phases: (a) assessment, (b) psychoeducation, (c) AR, (d) evaluat...

This case study reports the experiences and reflections of a trainee sport and exercise psychologist adopting a person-centred approach to service delivery with a professional basketball player. We supplement personal reflections and notes from client work with learning logs and supervision as part of coursework components on a taught doctorate in...

Concentration, focusing on the most relevant information for further processing, is regarded as a prerequisite for successful sporting performance. Athletes must possess awareness, knowledge, and controllability of their attention to concentrate effectively. One way to develop this awareness, knowledge, and controllability of attention is through t...

We used a novel meta regression analysis approach principles to examine the effectiveness of psychological skills training and behavioral interventions in sport assessed using single-case experimental designs (SCEDs). One hundred and twenty-one papers met the inclusion criteria applied to eight database searches and key sport psychology journals. S...

At present, there is only a theoretical understanding of the role of meta-attention in golf and there is no research that studies the real-time cognitive processes that construct meta-attention. Therefore, this study sought to explore the real-time meta-attentional processes experienced by golfers within a performance as this would develop a furthe...

This study sought to construct a theoretical understanding of meta-attention in golfers. Eight male golfers (7 competitive-elite and 1 successful-elite) were interviewed about their experiences of attentional processes in competitive golf. A Straussian grounded-theory approach was used throughout the research process, and interview transcripts were...

The Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (TCTSA) provides a psychophysiological framework for how athletes anticipate motivated performance situations. The purpose of this review is to discuss how research has addressed the 15 predictions made by the TCTSA, to evaluate the mechanisms underpinning the TCTSA in light of the research that...

Objectives: A grounded theory study (Oliver, McCarthy & Burns, in press) depicted meta-attention as a bottom-up resource based process; showing concentration came from a positive evaluation of attentional resources and successful implementation of an attentional control strategy. The theory suggests that internal distractions occur when a resource...

Previous research suggests that self-esteem and locus-of-control are inversely related to compliance. There is also research to suggest that low self-esteem and external locus-of-control are associated with interrogative suggestibility. While it is believed that compliance and interrogative suggestibility are risk factors for falsely confessing, pr...

Objectives: This study aimed to extend knowledge of the perceived motivationally-relevant influences of coaches, parents and peers during athlete development. Design: Mixed methods. Methods: Study 1 retrospectively explored perceptions of coach, parent and peer motivational influence across athlete development. Four investment stage football player...

Mental health is a global societal challenge. Sport, more specifically, elite sport, offers a potential window into the mental health challenges of young people. We initiated this research topic by proposing that explanations for mental health disturbance in sport predominantly based on training load (e.g., mental health model, Raglin, 2001), overl...

This narrative targets the role of happiness (subjective well-being) in change and performance in the workforce. Grounded within the paradigm of positive psychology, we draw on theory and research from several performance related domains (including sport and physical activity) to describe the development of happiness in organizations and associated...

What does “the map is not the territory” mean? It means that the world is what it is. In applied sport psychology, we create maps and models to help us understand how this world works yet these maps and models only approximate the actual world we experience. We simplify and symbolize the applied sport psychology (ASP) world as we see it to help us...

In this unique book on golf improvement, follow the fictional account of Chris Marriott, a 4-handicap golfer, as he plays a round of golf on the Jubilee Course at St Andrews – accompanied by a sport psychologist, James MacAndrew. As each hole presents its challenges, Chris and James discuss their experiences of golf and Chris begins to understand...

In a one group pretest-posttest design, 15 elite academy cricketers were exposed to two personal-disclosure mutual-sharing (PDMS) sessions during a preseason tour. Within PDMS1, athletes disclosed (via prepared speeches) relationship-oriented information and within PDMS2, mastery oriented information. Social identity, social identity content, and c...

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Abstract Two studies explored the relationship between emotions, perceived mental effort and concentration disruption in adult sport performers. In Study 1, semi-professional association football players completed questionnaire measures before and after a competitive match. In Study 2, student athletes completed questionnaire measures for two perfo...

Sport psychology is a competitive profession with rigorous and demanding entry routes in terms of education, training and accreditation. Once qualified, the sport psychology practitioner will face complex, day-to-day professional challenges of the kind not always covered in conventional sport psychology textbooks. Becoming a Sport Psychologist is t...

You do not have to play many rounds of golf to understand how much of the game is played in the mind. Different courses, conditions, and shot requirements all present unique challenges that need focus and mental strength from the winning player. In turn, moving from the practice range onto the golf course can often magically produce drops in concen...

This study examined the relationship among cardiovascular responses indicative of challenge and threat states, self-efficacy, perceived control, and emotions before an upcoming competition. Using a repeated-measures design, 48 collegiate athletes talked about an upcoming competition (sport-specific speech task) and the topic of friendship (control...

Abstract We explored the cognitive and affective components of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (TCTSA) using a cross-sectional design. One hundred and seventy-seven collegiate athletes indicated how they typically approached an important competition on measures of self-efficacy, perceived control, achievement goals, emotional...

Abstract We explored the relationship between emotions, cognitive interference, concentration disruption and performance in youth sport. In Study 1, 150 youth sport athletes (M(age) = 13.13 years, s = 1.79) completed measures of emotion, cognitive interference, and concentration disruption for their most recently completed competition. In Study 2,...

When Lew Hardy delivered the 1996 Colman Roberts Griffith address, the football premiership champions came from Manchester, the Cheltenham Gold Cup was won by a horse from Ireland and the man with his arms in the Green Jacket at Augusta came from Europe. Sixteen years later and you could be forgiven for thinking that some things never change. But i...