Advances in Motivation in Sport and Exercise

Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology

In 2008 I was asked to give the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual meeting of AASP in St. Louis, Missouri, which had the title, Whatever Happened to Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology? I decided to argue that forsaking some fundamental attributes of science was not in the best interests of scholars and practitioners in sport psychology. I believe that there is value in maintaining the attributes of parsimony, elegance, and conceptual coherence. Let me explain.

Parsimony

One of Einstein's famous quotes is that in science we should make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple! Parsimony in science simply means that we keep constructs as simple as possible. In my Coleman Griffith talk, I argued that there is a trend in sport psychology to make constructs more complex than they need to be. Some of this results from the natural desire to make constructs more applicable to the sport context, such as the efforts of Harwood and colleagues, but scholars often do not realize that by making things more “relevant” to sport they also make the constructs more complex and cause a subsequent loss of parsimony. McFee, a philosopher of science, is harshly critical of scholars in sport psychology because of their penchant for explaining phenomena with “boxes and arrows” and making things more complex than they should be (McFee, 2005). He argues that he is against the “boxes” mentality prevalent in sport psychology, where what is hoped for is a graphic model of boxes connected by arrows, as though sport psychologists knew what the boxes and arrows meant. In my address I gave several examples of complex multilevel theories (e.g., Vallerand, 2001; the hierarchical model of motivation derived from self-determination theory) of this trend toward complexity, in addition to the work of Elliot and colleagues (e.g., 1999) and Harwood and colleagues (e.g., 2008), which I criticized earlier. Is this trend toward complexity one that we should follow?

In her profile of Nobel Prize winners, Zuckerman (1977) gave several attributes of the typical prize winner, but one common attribute is particularly noteworthy: They see simplicity where other people see complexity. As an example, when Crick and Watson (1953) in their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule published their model of the double helix, Maurice Wilkins (a fellow scientist who was a rival in the quest) was surprised to see how simple the model was and is quoted to have said, “How simple, how elegant” (Watson, 1996). The quest for expanded frameworks might be valuable because we may be able to provide a better description of the complexity of motivation processes, but a cost is often present, and part of that cost is a loss of parsimony! It is well for sport scientists to remember the famous saying of William of Occam (1285-1347): “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” Known as Occam's Razor, it is a call for parsimony, which is sometimes ignored.

There are many examples of scientists in psychology “seeing simplicity” when others had noticed only complexity. These examples spur research into the phenomenon and allow us to understand it better. The example of the social facilitation paradigm is a case in point. Historically, scientists had noted that the presence of others sometimes facilitated and sometimes inhibited the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks (e.g., Triplett, 1897). But in his review of the findings, Zajonc (1965) saw simplicity when he realized that learning tasks were inhibited by the presence of others, whereas performance tasks or simple tasks were facilitated by the presence of others. Further, he argued, the presence of others creates arousal and arousal facilitates the dominant response. When learning, the dominant response was incorrect; when performing, the dominant response was correct. This simple insight suddenly made sense of the previous 70 years of conflicting research. This ability to see simplicity sometimes gives a conceptual insight into psychological (and other disciplinary) mechanisms.

Elegance

Again, Crick and Watson (1953) give a classic example of elegance, which is the attribute of being simple but profound in its implications. In their article in Nature, they concluded by stating that it had not escaped their notice that the specific pairing of the double helix they had postulated suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material! As we now know, this was the most profound scientific finding of the 20th century. The double helix solution was elegant in that it gave clear theoretical and practical meaning and changed our understanding of biological systems. Indeed, it was the birth of modern biology.

We can find many examples in psychology, too. One elegant theory is the social facilitation paradigm (Zajonc, 1965), which I discussed earlier. Zajonc demonstrated his elegant conceptual explanation with an elegant experiment. He had two groups of participants learn a complex task over many trials. One group did it in the presence of others, and the control group learned the task alone. Zajonc demonstrated that performing in the presence of others inhibited learning but facilitated later performance when compared to the control group: A simple but elegant and profound experiment demonstrated his theory. This experiment, and the later research that it stimulated (e.g., Martens, 1969), gave us insight into the reasons arousal and evaluative anxiety inhibited learning on motor tasks.

Another example of a parsimonious and elegant construct is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1977b). Self-efficacy cognitions represent a person's convictions or beliefs that he or she can successfully execute a course of action to produce a certain outcome. It is likened to a situation-specific self-confidence. But in this context, it is a simple but elegant construct that has stimulated a great deal of research into the determinants of motivation in exercise and physical activity (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume). And, of course, as I have been trying to expound, achievement goal theory in its original form is a parsimonious and elegant theory, too.

Conceptual Coherence

Parsimony and elegance are valued attributes for a theory, but conceptual coherence is an essential attribute! As we all know, theory gives meaning to data. Having an empirical paradigm that is weak on coherent constructs is not a desirable paradigm. These empirical paradigms with weak constructs, or constructs that lack conceptual coherence, are what produce the random noise in the literature against which the true signal of advancement is difficult to discern (Roberts, 1989). I must confess that in my experience with doctoral students, I find that they generally become sophisticated in research methods and statistical analyses but often struggle with understanding the psychological constructs and mechanisms about how things work psychologically. My favorite question to students who are preparing a research agenda is to ask them how they know that they are asking the right questions, or even important ones? I am reminded of the adage, If it is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well! The most important task that we can do as mentors of doctoral students is to make certain they understand that theory gives meaning to data and that statistical and research sophistication are secondary and merely tools to demonstrate the meaningfulness of theory. But they must do more than use “just any theory.” Is the theory coherent and meaningful to the question being asked? All of us have to make our own decisions about what constructs give meaning to the research that we are undertaking. My argument here is that the conceptual base should be coherent!

As an example, at the 2009 ISSP Congress in Marrakesh, Ed Deci was asked to react to some research papers, using self-determination theory as the conceptual base. When one researcher used self-determination theory to overlay his own theory to add impetus to his normal theoretical paradigm, Deci commented that it did not make much sense to do that because the theories were quite different in their conceptual base. His point was that it was better to build constructs within the conceptual paradigm used to capture the dynamics of the question being asked rather than bring in another theory and overlay the constructs of that theory over the original constructs. In other words, to give meaning to data, the theory must be conceptually coherent!

Achievement goal theory is a social-cognitive theory that was developed from the learned helplessness (mastery versus helplessness) research of Dweck (e.g., 1975), the cooperation-competition research of Ames (e.g., 1984a), the motivation research of Maehr (e.g., 1983) and the work of Nicholls (e.g., 1978) on the various conceptions of ability that children held. From this research, Nicholls saw simplicity where others had seen complexity and presented the parsimonious constructs that we all know today. Nicholls' unique contribution was to recognize that two understandings of ability existed and that previous theories had assumed one or the other. For example, self-efficacy (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume) assumes a task-involving conception of ability, whereas attribution theory (e.g., Weiner, 1972) assumes an ego-involving conception of ability. Nicholls, Maehr, Ames, and Dweck developed a theory (with their own interpretations) that recognized that both conceptions of ability need to be inherent in the theory. In addition, they recognized that individual difference variables (goal orientations) and contextual dynamics (motivational climate) were part of the same conceptual paradigm. That is the elegance of achievement goal theory. By recognizing that we each use task- or ego-involving conceptions of ability depending on the context, we have a conceptually coherent theory that encompasses both versions of the definition of success and embraces both individual difference variables (goal orientations) and the effect of the situation (motivational climate) on achievement striving.

Practical Applications

Although some nuances were found, research reviewed in this chapter has shown that harmonious passion is generally associated with more positive consequences than obsessive passion is. It would therefore seem appropriate to propose ways of facilitating harmonious passion. To promote harmonious passion, the three-step process at the core of the development of passion (see Mageau, Vallerand, Charest, et al., 2009) can be used. The three steps are, respectively, (1) activity selection, (2) activity valuation, and (3) the internalization of the activity representation in a person's identity. As seen previously, the role of the social environment at each of the three stages is crucial. Adults are in a prime position to promote children's harmonious passion, especially if they nurture children's need for autonomy and relatedness. With respect to the first step of activity selection, parents and physical educators should encourage children to perform a variety of sport activities, especially at a relatively young age (3-6 years). Later on (age 7-10 years), parents can register their children for a different activity each term. When they have tried a variety of activities and have developed sufficient knowledge to make decisions (perhaps around age 10 to 13 years), children can be encouraged to decide for themselves which activity they would like to engage in for the season. Such a variety of experiences may translate into a greater likelihood of selecting an activity that is a good fit with the child's identity and will thus later become a passion (see Mageau et al., 2009). Enjoyable experiences devoid of pressure and coercion in which children are provided with autonomy support and have the opportunity to choose by themselves their sport activity should set the stage for harmonious passion to blossom. In contrast, pressure or coercion to engage in sport or physical activity is likely to lead to the development of either amotivation (or the loss of motivation) or an obsessive passion toward the sport.

Autonomy support is also recommended for the other two stages of passion development. For instance, with respect to the second step in the passion development process, namely valuation of the selected sport activity, noncontrolling and supportive parents, physical educators, and coaches who preach by example and serve as models (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) may provide the necessary impetus to lead the young athletes to invest further in the sport activity and value it even more. The role of peers should not be underestimated because friends' influence becomes increasingly important as children move toward puberty (Damon, 1988). It should not be surprising that players on the same team have similar levels and types of passion in part because of the coach's influence but also because of the modeling influence that teammates provide. Such influence may lead to the internalization of the prevalent type of passion in that particular team environment. Similarly, a harmonious passion is likely to develop if the internalization process takes place in social environments (e.g., parents, friends, and especially coaches) that promote children's sense of autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987, 2000) by providing opportunities for choices, ownership, or “voice” regarding decisions and behaviors. For example, athletes who have recently started cross country running would be more likely to develop a harmonious passion toward this sport if their coach clearly explains to them why it is important to practice daily and gives them opportunities to choose among various practice regimens. Conversely, chances are that the same athletes would either lose their motivation for running or develop an obsessive passion if their coach pressures or coerces them to practice more or fails to explain the purpose of various training exercises.

Finally, practitioners and coaches who work with elite athletes should keep in mind that providing autonomy support is also important with high-level athletes. Indeed, by helping athletes feel autonomous by allowing them to provide input in game decisions (perhaps in the manner of Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers), the coach is likely to help maintain athletes' harmonious passion, facilitate a high level of performance, and create positive coach-athlete relationships. Coaches and consultants may believe that it is appropriate to be controlling toward high elite and professional athletes because such practices may enhance performance. Although the evidence presented in this chapter does not indicate that being controlling necessarily undermines performance, it does indicate that such behavior is likely to lead to obsessive passion and thus to some negative outcomes, such as lower levels of psychological, health, and relational well-being in athletes. In turn, negative coach-athlete relationships may have ill effects on cohesion, indirectly and negatively affect performance, and even cost the coach her or his job. Thus, creating an autonomy supportive environment may go a long way in providing positive outcomes for both athletes and coaches.

Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology

In 2008 I was asked to give the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual meeting of AASP in St. Louis, Missouri, which had the title, Whatever Happened to Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology? I decided to argue that forsaking some fundamental attributes of science was not in the best interests of scholars and practitioners in sport psychology. I believe that there is value in maintaining the attributes of parsimony, elegance, and conceptual coherence. Let me explain.

Parsimony

One of Einstein's famous quotes is that in science we should make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple! Parsimony in science simply means that we keep constructs as simple as possible. In my Coleman Griffith talk, I argued that there is a trend in sport psychology to make constructs more complex than they need to be. Some of this results from the natural desire to make constructs more applicable to the sport context, such as the efforts of Harwood and colleagues, but scholars often do not realize that by making things more “relevant” to sport they also make the constructs more complex and cause a subsequent loss of parsimony. McFee, a philosopher of science, is harshly critical of scholars in sport psychology because of their penchant for explaining phenomena with “boxes and arrows” and making things more complex than they should be (McFee, 2005). He argues that he is against the “boxes” mentality prevalent in sport psychology, where what is hoped for is a graphic model of boxes connected by arrows, as though sport psychologists knew what the boxes and arrows meant. In my address I gave several examples of complex multilevel theories (e.g., Vallerand, 2001; the hierarchical model of motivation derived from self-determination theory) of this trend toward complexity, in addition to the work of Elliot and colleagues (e.g., 1999) and Harwood and colleagues (e.g., 2008), which I criticized earlier. Is this trend toward complexity one that we should follow?

In her profile of Nobel Prize winners, Zuckerman (1977) gave several attributes of the typical prize winner, but one common attribute is particularly noteworthy: They see simplicity where other people see complexity. As an example, when Crick and Watson (1953) in their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule published their model of the double helix, Maurice Wilkins (a fellow scientist who was a rival in the quest) was surprised to see how simple the model was and is quoted to have said, “How simple, how elegant” (Watson, 1996). The quest for expanded frameworks might be valuable because we may be able to provide a better description of the complexity of motivation processes, but a cost is often present, and part of that cost is a loss of parsimony! It is well for sport scientists to remember the famous saying of William of Occam (1285-1347): “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” Known as Occam's Razor, it is a call for parsimony, which is sometimes ignored.

There are many examples of scientists in psychology “seeing simplicity” when others had noticed only complexity. These examples spur research into the phenomenon and allow us to understand it better. The example of the social facilitation paradigm is a case in point. Historically, scientists had noted that the presence of others sometimes facilitated and sometimes inhibited the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks (e.g., Triplett, 1897). But in his review of the findings, Zajonc (1965) saw simplicity when he realized that learning tasks were inhibited by the presence of others, whereas performance tasks or simple tasks were facilitated by the presence of others. Further, he argued, the presence of others creates arousal and arousal facilitates the dominant response. When learning, the dominant response was incorrect; when performing, the dominant response was correct. This simple insight suddenly made sense of the previous 70 years of conflicting research. This ability to see simplicity sometimes gives a conceptual insight into psychological (and other disciplinary) mechanisms.

Elegance

Again, Crick and Watson (1953) give a classic example of elegance, which is the attribute of being simple but profound in its implications. In their article in Nature, they concluded by stating that it had not escaped their notice that the specific pairing of the double helix they had postulated suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material! As we now know, this was the most profound scientific finding of the 20th century. The double helix solution was elegant in that it gave clear theoretical and practical meaning and changed our understanding of biological systems. Indeed, it was the birth of modern biology.

We can find many examples in psychology, too. One elegant theory is the social facilitation paradigm (Zajonc, 1965), which I discussed earlier. Zajonc demonstrated his elegant conceptual explanation with an elegant experiment. He had two groups of participants learn a complex task over many trials. One group did it in the presence of others, and the control group learned the task alone. Zajonc demonstrated that performing in the presence of others inhibited learning but facilitated later performance when compared to the control group: A simple but elegant and profound experiment demonstrated his theory. This experiment, and the later research that it stimulated (e.g., Martens, 1969), gave us insight into the reasons arousal and evaluative anxiety inhibited learning on motor tasks.

Another example of a parsimonious and elegant construct is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1977b). Self-efficacy cognitions represent a person's convictions or beliefs that he or she can successfully execute a course of action to produce a certain outcome. It is likened to a situation-specific self-confidence. But in this context, it is a simple but elegant construct that has stimulated a great deal of research into the determinants of motivation in exercise and physical activity (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume). And, of course, as I have been trying to expound, achievement goal theory in its original form is a parsimonious and elegant theory, too.

Conceptual Coherence

Parsimony and elegance are valued attributes for a theory, but conceptual coherence is an essential attribute! As we all know, theory gives meaning to data. Having an empirical paradigm that is weak on coherent constructs is not a desirable paradigm. These empirical paradigms with weak constructs, or constructs that lack conceptual coherence, are what produce the random noise in the literature against which the true signal of advancement is difficult to discern (Roberts, 1989). I must confess that in my experience with doctoral students, I find that they generally become sophisticated in research methods and statistical analyses but often struggle with understanding the psychological constructs and mechanisms about how things work psychologically. My favorite question to students who are preparing a research agenda is to ask them how they know that they are asking the right questions, or even important ones? I am reminded of the adage, If it is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well! The most important task that we can do as mentors of doctoral students is to make certain they understand that theory gives meaning to data and that statistical and research sophistication are secondary and merely tools to demonstrate the meaningfulness of theory. But they must do more than use “just any theory.” Is the theory coherent and meaningful to the question being asked? All of us have to make our own decisions about what constructs give meaning to the research that we are undertaking. My argument here is that the conceptual base should be coherent!

As an example, at the 2009 ISSP Congress in Marrakesh, Ed Deci was asked to react to some research papers, using self-determination theory as the conceptual base. When one researcher used self-determination theory to overlay his own theory to add impetus to his normal theoretical paradigm, Deci commented that it did not make much sense to do that because the theories were quite different in their conceptual base. His point was that it was better to build constructs within the conceptual paradigm used to capture the dynamics of the question being asked rather than bring in another theory and overlay the constructs of that theory over the original constructs. In other words, to give meaning to data, the theory must be conceptually coherent!

Achievement goal theory is a social-cognitive theory that was developed from the learned helplessness (mastery versus helplessness) research of Dweck (e.g., 1975), the cooperation-competition research of Ames (e.g., 1984a), the motivation research of Maehr (e.g., 1983) and the work of Nicholls (e.g., 1978) on the various conceptions of ability that children held. From this research, Nicholls saw simplicity where others had seen complexity and presented the parsimonious constructs that we all know today. Nicholls' unique contribution was to recognize that two understandings of ability existed and that previous theories had assumed one or the other. For example, self-efficacy (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume) assumes a task-involving conception of ability, whereas attribution theory (e.g., Weiner, 1972) assumes an ego-involving conception of ability. Nicholls, Maehr, Ames, and Dweck developed a theory (with their own interpretations) that recognized that both conceptions of ability need to be inherent in the theory. In addition, they recognized that individual difference variables (goal orientations) and contextual dynamics (motivational climate) were part of the same conceptual paradigm. That is the elegance of achievement goal theory. By recognizing that we each use task- or ego-involving conceptions of ability depending on the context, we have a conceptually coherent theory that encompasses both versions of the definition of success and embraces both individual difference variables (goal orientations) and the effect of the situation (motivational climate) on achievement striving.

Practical Applications

Although some nuances were found, research reviewed in this chapter has shown that harmonious passion is generally associated with more positive consequences than obsessive passion is. It would therefore seem appropriate to propose ways of facilitating harmonious passion. To promote harmonious passion, the three-step process at the core of the development of passion (see Mageau, Vallerand, Charest, et al., 2009) can be used. The three steps are, respectively, (1) activity selection, (2) activity valuation, and (3) the internalization of the activity representation in a person's identity. As seen previously, the role of the social environment at each of the three stages is crucial. Adults are in a prime position to promote children's harmonious passion, especially if they nurture children's need for autonomy and relatedness. With respect to the first step of activity selection, parents and physical educators should encourage children to perform a variety of sport activities, especially at a relatively young age (3-6 years). Later on (age 7-10 years), parents can register their children for a different activity each term. When they have tried a variety of activities and have developed sufficient knowledge to make decisions (perhaps around age 10 to 13 years), children can be encouraged to decide for themselves which activity they would like to engage in for the season. Such a variety of experiences may translate into a greater likelihood of selecting an activity that is a good fit with the child's identity and will thus later become a passion (see Mageau et al., 2009). Enjoyable experiences devoid of pressure and coercion in which children are provided with autonomy support and have the opportunity to choose by themselves their sport activity should set the stage for harmonious passion to blossom. In contrast, pressure or coercion to engage in sport or physical activity is likely to lead to the development of either amotivation (or the loss of motivation) or an obsessive passion toward the sport.

Autonomy support is also recommended for the other two stages of passion development. For instance, with respect to the second step in the passion development process, namely valuation of the selected sport activity, noncontrolling and supportive parents, physical educators, and coaches who preach by example and serve as models (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) may provide the necessary impetus to lead the young athletes to invest further in the sport activity and value it even more. The role of peers should not be underestimated because friends' influence becomes increasingly important as children move toward puberty (Damon, 1988). It should not be surprising that players on the same team have similar levels and types of passion in part because of the coach's influence but also because of the modeling influence that teammates provide. Such influence may lead to the internalization of the prevalent type of passion in that particular team environment. Similarly, a harmonious passion is likely to develop if the internalization process takes place in social environments (e.g., parents, friends, and especially coaches) that promote children's sense of autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987, 2000) by providing opportunities for choices, ownership, or “voice” regarding decisions and behaviors. For example, athletes who have recently started cross country running would be more likely to develop a harmonious passion toward this sport if their coach clearly explains to them why it is important to practice daily and gives them opportunities to choose among various practice regimens. Conversely, chances are that the same athletes would either lose their motivation for running or develop an obsessive passion if their coach pressures or coerces them to practice more or fails to explain the purpose of various training exercises.

Finally, practitioners and coaches who work with elite athletes should keep in mind that providing autonomy support is also important with high-level athletes. Indeed, by helping athletes feel autonomous by allowing them to provide input in game decisions (perhaps in the manner of Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers), the coach is likely to help maintain athletes' harmonious passion, facilitate a high level of performance, and create positive coach-athlete relationships. Coaches and consultants may believe that it is appropriate to be controlling toward high elite and professional athletes because such practices may enhance performance. Although the evidence presented in this chapter does not indicate that being controlling necessarily undermines performance, it does indicate that such behavior is likely to lead to obsessive passion and thus to some negative outcomes, such as lower levels of psychological, health, and relational well-being in athletes. In turn, negative coach-athlete relationships may have ill effects on cohesion, indirectly and negatively affect performance, and even cost the coach her or his job. Thus, creating an autonomy supportive environment may go a long way in providing positive outcomes for both athletes and coaches.

Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology

In 2008 I was asked to give the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual meeting of AASP in St. Louis, Missouri, which had the title, Whatever Happened to Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology? I decided to argue that forsaking some fundamental attributes of science was not in the best interests of scholars and practitioners in sport psychology. I believe that there is value in maintaining the attributes of parsimony, elegance, and conceptual coherence. Let me explain.

Parsimony

One of Einstein's famous quotes is that in science we should make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple! Parsimony in science simply means that we keep constructs as simple as possible. In my Coleman Griffith talk, I argued that there is a trend in sport psychology to make constructs more complex than they need to be. Some of this results from the natural desire to make constructs more applicable to the sport context, such as the efforts of Harwood and colleagues, but scholars often do not realize that by making things more “relevant” to sport they also make the constructs more complex and cause a subsequent loss of parsimony. McFee, a philosopher of science, is harshly critical of scholars in sport psychology because of their penchant for explaining phenomena with “boxes and arrows” and making things more complex than they should be (McFee, 2005). He argues that he is against the “boxes” mentality prevalent in sport psychology, where what is hoped for is a graphic model of boxes connected by arrows, as though sport psychologists knew what the boxes and arrows meant. In my address I gave several examples of complex multilevel theories (e.g., Vallerand, 2001; the hierarchical model of motivation derived from self-determination theory) of this trend toward complexity, in addition to the work of Elliot and colleagues (e.g., 1999) and Harwood and colleagues (e.g., 2008), which I criticized earlier. Is this trend toward complexity one that we should follow?

In her profile of Nobel Prize winners, Zuckerman (1977) gave several attributes of the typical prize winner, but one common attribute is particularly noteworthy: They see simplicity where other people see complexity. As an example, when Crick and Watson (1953) in their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule published their model of the double helix, Maurice Wilkins (a fellow scientist who was a rival in the quest) was surprised to see how simple the model was and is quoted to have said, “How simple, how elegant” (Watson, 1996). The quest for expanded frameworks might be valuable because we may be able to provide a better description of the complexity of motivation processes, but a cost is often present, and part of that cost is a loss of parsimony! It is well for sport scientists to remember the famous saying of William of Occam (1285-1347): “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” Known as Occam's Razor, it is a call for parsimony, which is sometimes ignored.

There are many examples of scientists in psychology “seeing simplicity” when others had noticed only complexity. These examples spur research into the phenomenon and allow us to understand it better. The example of the social facilitation paradigm is a case in point. Historically, scientists had noted that the presence of others sometimes facilitated and sometimes inhibited the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks (e.g., Triplett, 1897). But in his review of the findings, Zajonc (1965) saw simplicity when he realized that learning tasks were inhibited by the presence of others, whereas performance tasks or simple tasks were facilitated by the presence of others. Further, he argued, the presence of others creates arousal and arousal facilitates the dominant response. When learning, the dominant response was incorrect; when performing, the dominant response was correct. This simple insight suddenly made sense of the previous 70 years of conflicting research. This ability to see simplicity sometimes gives a conceptual insight into psychological (and other disciplinary) mechanisms.

Elegance

Again, Crick and Watson (1953) give a classic example of elegance, which is the attribute of being simple but profound in its implications. In their article in Nature, they concluded by stating that it had not escaped their notice that the specific pairing of the double helix they had postulated suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material! As we now know, this was the most profound scientific finding of the 20th century. The double helix solution was elegant in that it gave clear theoretical and practical meaning and changed our understanding of biological systems. Indeed, it was the birth of modern biology.

We can find many examples in psychology, too. One elegant theory is the social facilitation paradigm (Zajonc, 1965), which I discussed earlier. Zajonc demonstrated his elegant conceptual explanation with an elegant experiment. He had two groups of participants learn a complex task over many trials. One group did it in the presence of others, and the control group learned the task alone. Zajonc demonstrated that performing in the presence of others inhibited learning but facilitated later performance when compared to the control group: A simple but elegant and profound experiment demonstrated his theory. This experiment, and the later research that it stimulated (e.g., Martens, 1969), gave us insight into the reasons arousal and evaluative anxiety inhibited learning on motor tasks.

Another example of a parsimonious and elegant construct is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1977b). Self-efficacy cognitions represent a person's convictions or beliefs that he or she can successfully execute a course of action to produce a certain outcome. It is likened to a situation-specific self-confidence. But in this context, it is a simple but elegant construct that has stimulated a great deal of research into the determinants of motivation in exercise and physical activity (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume). And, of course, as I have been trying to expound, achievement goal theory in its original form is a parsimonious and elegant theory, too.

Conceptual Coherence

Parsimony and elegance are valued attributes for a theory, but conceptual coherence is an essential attribute! As we all know, theory gives meaning to data. Having an empirical paradigm that is weak on coherent constructs is not a desirable paradigm. These empirical paradigms with weak constructs, or constructs that lack conceptual coherence, are what produce the random noise in the literature against which the true signal of advancement is difficult to discern (Roberts, 1989). I must confess that in my experience with doctoral students, I find that they generally become sophisticated in research methods and statistical analyses but often struggle with understanding the psychological constructs and mechanisms about how things work psychologically. My favorite question to students who are preparing a research agenda is to ask them how they know that they are asking the right questions, or even important ones? I am reminded of the adage, If it is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well! The most important task that we can do as mentors of doctoral students is to make certain they understand that theory gives meaning to data and that statistical and research sophistication are secondary and merely tools to demonstrate the meaningfulness of theory. But they must do more than use “just any theory.” Is the theory coherent and meaningful to the question being asked? All of us have to make our own decisions about what constructs give meaning to the research that we are undertaking. My argument here is that the conceptual base should be coherent!

As an example, at the 2009 ISSP Congress in Marrakesh, Ed Deci was asked to react to some research papers, using self-determination theory as the conceptual base. When one researcher used self-determination theory to overlay his own theory to add impetus to his normal theoretical paradigm, Deci commented that it did not make much sense to do that because the theories were quite different in their conceptual base. His point was that it was better to build constructs within the conceptual paradigm used to capture the dynamics of the question being asked rather than bring in another theory and overlay the constructs of that theory over the original constructs. In other words, to give meaning to data, the theory must be conceptually coherent!

Achievement goal theory is a social-cognitive theory that was developed from the learned helplessness (mastery versus helplessness) research of Dweck (e.g., 1975), the cooperation-competition research of Ames (e.g., 1984a), the motivation research of Maehr (e.g., 1983) and the work of Nicholls (e.g., 1978) on the various conceptions of ability that children held. From this research, Nicholls saw simplicity where others had seen complexity and presented the parsimonious constructs that we all know today. Nicholls' unique contribution was to recognize that two understandings of ability existed and that previous theories had assumed one or the other. For example, self-efficacy (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume) assumes a task-involving conception of ability, whereas attribution theory (e.g., Weiner, 1972) assumes an ego-involving conception of ability. Nicholls, Maehr, Ames, and Dweck developed a theory (with their own interpretations) that recognized that both conceptions of ability need to be inherent in the theory. In addition, they recognized that individual difference variables (goal orientations) and contextual dynamics (motivational climate) were part of the same conceptual paradigm. That is the elegance of achievement goal theory. By recognizing that we each use task- or ego-involving conceptions of ability depending on the context, we have a conceptually coherent theory that encompasses both versions of the definition of success and embraces both individual difference variables (goal orientations) and the effect of the situation (motivational climate) on achievement striving.

Practical Applications

Although some nuances were found, research reviewed in this chapter has shown that harmonious passion is generally associated with more positive consequences than obsessive passion is. It would therefore seem appropriate to propose ways of facilitating harmonious passion. To promote harmonious passion, the three-step process at the core of the development of passion (see Mageau, Vallerand, Charest, et al., 2009) can be used. The three steps are, respectively, (1) activity selection, (2) activity valuation, and (3) the internalization of the activity representation in a person's identity. As seen previously, the role of the social environment at each of the three stages is crucial. Adults are in a prime position to promote children's harmonious passion, especially if they nurture children's need for autonomy and relatedness. With respect to the first step of activity selection, parents and physical educators should encourage children to perform a variety of sport activities, especially at a relatively young age (3-6 years). Later on (age 7-10 years), parents can register their children for a different activity each term. When they have tried a variety of activities and have developed sufficient knowledge to make decisions (perhaps around age 10 to 13 years), children can be encouraged to decide for themselves which activity they would like to engage in for the season. Such a variety of experiences may translate into a greater likelihood of selecting an activity that is a good fit with the child's identity and will thus later become a passion (see Mageau et al., 2009). Enjoyable experiences devoid of pressure and coercion in which children are provided with autonomy support and have the opportunity to choose by themselves their sport activity should set the stage for harmonious passion to blossom. In contrast, pressure or coercion to engage in sport or physical activity is likely to lead to the development of either amotivation (or the loss of motivation) or an obsessive passion toward the sport.

Autonomy support is also recommended for the other two stages of passion development. For instance, with respect to the second step in the passion development process, namely valuation of the selected sport activity, noncontrolling and supportive parents, physical educators, and coaches who preach by example and serve as models (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) may provide the necessary impetus to lead the young athletes to invest further in the sport activity and value it even more. The role of peers should not be underestimated because friends' influence becomes increasingly important as children move toward puberty (Damon, 1988). It should not be surprising that players on the same team have similar levels and types of passion in part because of the coach's influence but also because of the modeling influence that teammates provide. Such influence may lead to the internalization of the prevalent type of passion in that particular team environment. Similarly, a harmonious passion is likely to develop if the internalization process takes place in social environments (e.g., parents, friends, and especially coaches) that promote children's sense of autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987, 2000) by providing opportunities for choices, ownership, or “voice” regarding decisions and behaviors. For example, athletes who have recently started cross country running would be more likely to develop a harmonious passion toward this sport if their coach clearly explains to them why it is important to practice daily and gives them opportunities to choose among various practice regimens. Conversely, chances are that the same athletes would either lose their motivation for running or develop an obsessive passion if their coach pressures or coerces them to practice more or fails to explain the purpose of various training exercises.

Finally, practitioners and coaches who work with elite athletes should keep in mind that providing autonomy support is also important with high-level athletes. Indeed, by helping athletes feel autonomous by allowing them to provide input in game decisions (perhaps in the manner of Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers), the coach is likely to help maintain athletes' harmonious passion, facilitate a high level of performance, and create positive coach-athlete relationships. Coaches and consultants may believe that it is appropriate to be controlling toward high elite and professional athletes because such practices may enhance performance. Although the evidence presented in this chapter does not indicate that being controlling necessarily undermines performance, it does indicate that such behavior is likely to lead to obsessive passion and thus to some negative outcomes, such as lower levels of psychological, health, and relational well-being in athletes. In turn, negative coach-athlete relationships may have ill effects on cohesion, indirectly and negatively affect performance, and even cost the coach her or his job. Thus, creating an autonomy supportive environment may go a long way in providing positive outcomes for both athletes and coaches.

Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology

In 2008 I was asked to give the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual meeting of AASP in St. Louis, Missouri, which had the title, Whatever Happened to Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology? I decided to argue that forsaking some fundamental attributes of science was not in the best interests of scholars and practitioners in sport psychology. I believe that there is value in maintaining the attributes of parsimony, elegance, and conceptual coherence. Let me explain.

Parsimony

One of Einstein's famous quotes is that in science we should make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple! Parsimony in science simply means that we keep constructs as simple as possible. In my Coleman Griffith talk, I argued that there is a trend in sport psychology to make constructs more complex than they need to be. Some of this results from the natural desire to make constructs more applicable to the sport context, such as the efforts of Harwood and colleagues, but scholars often do not realize that by making things more “relevant” to sport they also make the constructs more complex and cause a subsequent loss of parsimony. McFee, a philosopher of science, is harshly critical of scholars in sport psychology because of their penchant for explaining phenomena with “boxes and arrows” and making things more complex than they should be (McFee, 2005). He argues that he is against the “boxes” mentality prevalent in sport psychology, where what is hoped for is a graphic model of boxes connected by arrows, as though sport psychologists knew what the boxes and arrows meant. In my address I gave several examples of complex multilevel theories (e.g., Vallerand, 2001; the hierarchical model of motivation derived from self-determination theory) of this trend toward complexity, in addition to the work of Elliot and colleagues (e.g., 1999) and Harwood and colleagues (e.g., 2008), which I criticized earlier. Is this trend toward complexity one that we should follow?

In her profile of Nobel Prize winners, Zuckerman (1977) gave several attributes of the typical prize winner, but one common attribute is particularly noteworthy: They see simplicity where other people see complexity. As an example, when Crick and Watson (1953) in their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule published their model of the double helix, Maurice Wilkins (a fellow scientist who was a rival in the quest) was surprised to see how simple the model was and is quoted to have said, “How simple, how elegant” (Watson, 1996). The quest for expanded frameworks might be valuable because we may be able to provide a better description of the complexity of motivation processes, but a cost is often present, and part of that cost is a loss of parsimony! It is well for sport scientists to remember the famous saying of William of Occam (1285-1347): “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” Known as Occam's Razor, it is a call for parsimony, which is sometimes ignored.

There are many examples of scientists in psychology “seeing simplicity” when others had noticed only complexity. These examples spur research into the phenomenon and allow us to understand it better. The example of the social facilitation paradigm is a case in point. Historically, scientists had noted that the presence of others sometimes facilitated and sometimes inhibited the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks (e.g., Triplett, 1897). But in his review of the findings, Zajonc (1965) saw simplicity when he realized that learning tasks were inhibited by the presence of others, whereas performance tasks or simple tasks were facilitated by the presence of others. Further, he argued, the presence of others creates arousal and arousal facilitates the dominant response. When learning, the dominant response was incorrect; when performing, the dominant response was correct. This simple insight suddenly made sense of the previous 70 years of conflicting research. This ability to see simplicity sometimes gives a conceptual insight into psychological (and other disciplinary) mechanisms.

Elegance

Again, Crick and Watson (1953) give a classic example of elegance, which is the attribute of being simple but profound in its implications. In their article in Nature, they concluded by stating that it had not escaped their notice that the specific pairing of the double helix they had postulated suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material! As we now know, this was the most profound scientific finding of the 20th century. The double helix solution was elegant in that it gave clear theoretical and practical meaning and changed our understanding of biological systems. Indeed, it was the birth of modern biology.

We can find many examples in psychology, too. One elegant theory is the social facilitation paradigm (Zajonc, 1965), which I discussed earlier. Zajonc demonstrated his elegant conceptual explanation with an elegant experiment. He had two groups of participants learn a complex task over many trials. One group did it in the presence of others, and the control group learned the task alone. Zajonc demonstrated that performing in the presence of others inhibited learning but facilitated later performance when compared to the control group: A simple but elegant and profound experiment demonstrated his theory. This experiment, and the later research that it stimulated (e.g., Martens, 1969), gave us insight into the reasons arousal and evaluative anxiety inhibited learning on motor tasks.

Another example of a parsimonious and elegant construct is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1977b). Self-efficacy cognitions represent a person's convictions or beliefs that he or she can successfully execute a course of action to produce a certain outcome. It is likened to a situation-specific self-confidence. But in this context, it is a simple but elegant construct that has stimulated a great deal of research into the determinants of motivation in exercise and physical activity (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume). And, of course, as I have been trying to expound, achievement goal theory in its original form is a parsimonious and elegant theory, too.

Conceptual Coherence

Parsimony and elegance are valued attributes for a theory, but conceptual coherence is an essential attribute! As we all know, theory gives meaning to data. Having an empirical paradigm that is weak on coherent constructs is not a desirable paradigm. These empirical paradigms with weak constructs, or constructs that lack conceptual coherence, are what produce the random noise in the literature against which the true signal of advancement is difficult to discern (Roberts, 1989). I must confess that in my experience with doctoral students, I find that they generally become sophisticated in research methods and statistical analyses but often struggle with understanding the psychological constructs and mechanisms about how things work psychologically. My favorite question to students who are preparing a research agenda is to ask them how they know that they are asking the right questions, or even important ones? I am reminded of the adage, If it is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well! The most important task that we can do as mentors of doctoral students is to make certain they understand that theory gives meaning to data and that statistical and research sophistication are secondary and merely tools to demonstrate the meaningfulness of theory. But they must do more than use “just any theory.” Is the theory coherent and meaningful to the question being asked? All of us have to make our own decisions about what constructs give meaning to the research that we are undertaking. My argument here is that the conceptual base should be coherent!

As an example, at the 2009 ISSP Congress in Marrakesh, Ed Deci was asked to react to some research papers, using self-determination theory as the conceptual base. When one researcher used self-determination theory to overlay his own theory to add impetus to his normal theoretical paradigm, Deci commented that it did not make much sense to do that because the theories were quite different in their conceptual base. His point was that it was better to build constructs within the conceptual paradigm used to capture the dynamics of the question being asked rather than bring in another theory and overlay the constructs of that theory over the original constructs. In other words, to give meaning to data, the theory must be conceptually coherent!

Achievement goal theory is a social-cognitive theory that was developed from the learned helplessness (mastery versus helplessness) research of Dweck (e.g., 1975), the cooperation-competition research of Ames (e.g., 1984a), the motivation research of Maehr (e.g., 1983) and the work of Nicholls (e.g., 1978) on the various conceptions of ability that children held. From this research, Nicholls saw simplicity where others had seen complexity and presented the parsimonious constructs that we all know today. Nicholls' unique contribution was to recognize that two understandings of ability existed and that previous theories had assumed one or the other. For example, self-efficacy (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume) assumes a task-involving conception of ability, whereas attribution theory (e.g., Weiner, 1972) assumes an ego-involving conception of ability. Nicholls, Maehr, Ames, and Dweck developed a theory (with their own interpretations) that recognized that both conceptions of ability need to be inherent in the theory. In addition, they recognized that individual difference variables (goal orientations) and contextual dynamics (motivational climate) were part of the same conceptual paradigm. That is the elegance of achievement goal theory. By recognizing that we each use task- or ego-involving conceptions of ability depending on the context, we have a conceptually coherent theory that encompasses both versions of the definition of success and embraces both individual difference variables (goal orientations) and the effect of the situation (motivational climate) on achievement striving.

Practical Applications

Although some nuances were found, research reviewed in this chapter has shown that harmonious passion is generally associated with more positive consequences than obsessive passion is. It would therefore seem appropriate to propose ways of facilitating harmonious passion. To promote harmonious passion, the three-step process at the core of the development of passion (see Mageau, Vallerand, Charest, et al., 2009) can be used. The three steps are, respectively, (1) activity selection, (2) activity valuation, and (3) the internalization of the activity representation in a person's identity. As seen previously, the role of the social environment at each of the three stages is crucial. Adults are in a prime position to promote children's harmonious passion, especially if they nurture children's need for autonomy and relatedness. With respect to the first step of activity selection, parents and physical educators should encourage children to perform a variety of sport activities, especially at a relatively young age (3-6 years). Later on (age 7-10 years), parents can register their children for a different activity each term. When they have tried a variety of activities and have developed sufficient knowledge to make decisions (perhaps around age 10 to 13 years), children can be encouraged to decide for themselves which activity they would like to engage in for the season. Such a variety of experiences may translate into a greater likelihood of selecting an activity that is a good fit with the child's identity and will thus later become a passion (see Mageau et al., 2009). Enjoyable experiences devoid of pressure and coercion in which children are provided with autonomy support and have the opportunity to choose by themselves their sport activity should set the stage for harmonious passion to blossom. In contrast, pressure or coercion to engage in sport or physical activity is likely to lead to the development of either amotivation (or the loss of motivation) or an obsessive passion toward the sport.

Autonomy support is also recommended for the other two stages of passion development. For instance, with respect to the second step in the passion development process, namely valuation of the selected sport activity, noncontrolling and supportive parents, physical educators, and coaches who preach by example and serve as models (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) may provide the necessary impetus to lead the young athletes to invest further in the sport activity and value it even more. The role of peers should not be underestimated because friends' influence becomes increasingly important as children move toward puberty (Damon, 1988). It should not be surprising that players on the same team have similar levels and types of passion in part because of the coach's influence but also because of the modeling influence that teammates provide. Such influence may lead to the internalization of the prevalent type of passion in that particular team environment. Similarly, a harmonious passion is likely to develop if the internalization process takes place in social environments (e.g., parents, friends, and especially coaches) that promote children's sense of autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987, 2000) by providing opportunities for choices, ownership, or “voice” regarding decisions and behaviors. For example, athletes who have recently started cross country running would be more likely to develop a harmonious passion toward this sport if their coach clearly explains to them why it is important to practice daily and gives them opportunities to choose among various practice regimens. Conversely, chances are that the same athletes would either lose their motivation for running or develop an obsessive passion if their coach pressures or coerces them to practice more or fails to explain the purpose of various training exercises.

Finally, practitioners and coaches who work with elite athletes should keep in mind that providing autonomy support is also important with high-level athletes. Indeed, by helping athletes feel autonomous by allowing them to provide input in game decisions (perhaps in the manner of Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers), the coach is likely to help maintain athletes' harmonious passion, facilitate a high level of performance, and create positive coach-athlete relationships. Coaches and consultants may believe that it is appropriate to be controlling toward high elite and professional athletes because such practices may enhance performance. Although the evidence presented in this chapter does not indicate that being controlling necessarily undermines performance, it does indicate that such behavior is likely to lead to obsessive passion and thus to some negative outcomes, such as lower levels of psychological, health, and relational well-being in athletes. In turn, negative coach-athlete relationships may have ill effects on cohesion, indirectly and negatively affect performance, and even cost the coach her or his job. Thus, creating an autonomy supportive environment may go a long way in providing positive outcomes for both athletes and coaches.

Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology

In 2008 I was asked to give the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual meeting of AASP in St. Louis, Missouri, which had the title, Whatever Happened to Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology? I decided to argue that forsaking some fundamental attributes of science was not in the best interests of scholars and practitioners in sport psychology. I believe that there is value in maintaining the attributes of parsimony, elegance, and conceptual coherence. Let me explain.

Parsimony

One of Einstein's famous quotes is that in science we should make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple! Parsimony in science simply means that we keep constructs as simple as possible. In my Coleman Griffith talk, I argued that there is a trend in sport psychology to make constructs more complex than they need to be. Some of this results from the natural desire to make constructs more applicable to the sport context, such as the efforts of Harwood and colleagues, but scholars often do not realize that by making things more “relevant” to sport they also make the constructs more complex and cause a subsequent loss of parsimony. McFee, a philosopher of science, is harshly critical of scholars in sport psychology because of their penchant for explaining phenomena with “boxes and arrows” and making things more complex than they should be (McFee, 2005). He argues that he is against the “boxes” mentality prevalent in sport psychology, where what is hoped for is a graphic model of boxes connected by arrows, as though sport psychologists knew what the boxes and arrows meant. In my address I gave several examples of complex multilevel theories (e.g., Vallerand, 2001; the hierarchical model of motivation derived from self-determination theory) of this trend toward complexity, in addition to the work of Elliot and colleagues (e.g., 1999) and Harwood and colleagues (e.g., 2008), which I criticized earlier. Is this trend toward complexity one that we should follow?

In her profile of Nobel Prize winners, Zuckerman (1977) gave several attributes of the typical prize winner, but one common attribute is particularly noteworthy: They see simplicity where other people see complexity. As an example, when Crick and Watson (1953) in their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule published their model of the double helix, Maurice Wilkins (a fellow scientist who was a rival in the quest) was surprised to see how simple the model was and is quoted to have said, “How simple, how elegant” (Watson, 1996). The quest for expanded frameworks might be valuable because we may be able to provide a better description of the complexity of motivation processes, but a cost is often present, and part of that cost is a loss of parsimony! It is well for sport scientists to remember the famous saying of William of Occam (1285-1347): “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” Known as Occam's Razor, it is a call for parsimony, which is sometimes ignored.

There are many examples of scientists in psychology “seeing simplicity” when others had noticed only complexity. These examples spur research into the phenomenon and allow us to understand it better. The example of the social facilitation paradigm is a case in point. Historically, scientists had noted that the presence of others sometimes facilitated and sometimes inhibited the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks (e.g., Triplett, 1897). But in his review of the findings, Zajonc (1965) saw simplicity when he realized that learning tasks were inhibited by the presence of others, whereas performance tasks or simple tasks were facilitated by the presence of others. Further, he argued, the presence of others creates arousal and arousal facilitates the dominant response. When learning, the dominant response was incorrect; when performing, the dominant response was correct. This simple insight suddenly made sense of the previous 70 years of conflicting research. This ability to see simplicity sometimes gives a conceptual insight into psychological (and other disciplinary) mechanisms.

Elegance

Again, Crick and Watson (1953) give a classic example of elegance, which is the attribute of being simple but profound in its implications. In their article in Nature, they concluded by stating that it had not escaped their notice that the specific pairing of the double helix they had postulated suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material! As we now know, this was the most profound scientific finding of the 20th century. The double helix solution was elegant in that it gave clear theoretical and practical meaning and changed our understanding of biological systems. Indeed, it was the birth of modern biology.

We can find many examples in psychology, too. One elegant theory is the social facilitation paradigm (Zajonc, 1965), which I discussed earlier. Zajonc demonstrated his elegant conceptual explanation with an elegant experiment. He had two groups of participants learn a complex task over many trials. One group did it in the presence of others, and the control group learned the task alone. Zajonc demonstrated that performing in the presence of others inhibited learning but facilitated later performance when compared to the control group: A simple but elegant and profound experiment demonstrated his theory. This experiment, and the later research that it stimulated (e.g., Martens, 1969), gave us insight into the reasons arousal and evaluative anxiety inhibited learning on motor tasks.

Another example of a parsimonious and elegant construct is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1977b). Self-efficacy cognitions represent a person's convictions or beliefs that he or she can successfully execute a course of action to produce a certain outcome. It is likened to a situation-specific self-confidence. But in this context, it is a simple but elegant construct that has stimulated a great deal of research into the determinants of motivation in exercise and physical activity (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume). And, of course, as I have been trying to expound, achievement goal theory in its original form is a parsimonious and elegant theory, too.

Conceptual Coherence

Parsimony and elegance are valued attributes for a theory, but conceptual coherence is an essential attribute! As we all know, theory gives meaning to data. Having an empirical paradigm that is weak on coherent constructs is not a desirable paradigm. These empirical paradigms with weak constructs, or constructs that lack conceptual coherence, are what produce the random noise in the literature against which the true signal of advancement is difficult to discern (Roberts, 1989). I must confess that in my experience with doctoral students, I find that they generally become sophisticated in research methods and statistical analyses but often struggle with understanding the psychological constructs and mechanisms about how things work psychologically. My favorite question to students who are preparing a research agenda is to ask them how they know that they are asking the right questions, or even important ones? I am reminded of the adage, If it is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well! The most important task that we can do as mentors of doctoral students is to make certain they understand that theory gives meaning to data and that statistical and research sophistication are secondary and merely tools to demonstrate the meaningfulness of theory. But they must do more than use “just any theory.” Is the theory coherent and meaningful to the question being asked? All of us have to make our own decisions about what constructs give meaning to the research that we are undertaking. My argument here is that the conceptual base should be coherent!

As an example, at the 2009 ISSP Congress in Marrakesh, Ed Deci was asked to react to some research papers, using self-determination theory as the conceptual base. When one researcher used self-determination theory to overlay his own theory to add impetus to his normal theoretical paradigm, Deci commented that it did not make much sense to do that because the theories were quite different in their conceptual base. His point was that it was better to build constructs within the conceptual paradigm used to capture the dynamics of the question being asked rather than bring in another theory and overlay the constructs of that theory over the original constructs. In other words, to give meaning to data, the theory must be conceptually coherent!

Achievement goal theory is a social-cognitive theory that was developed from the learned helplessness (mastery versus helplessness) research of Dweck (e.g., 1975), the cooperation-competition research of Ames (e.g., 1984a), the motivation research of Maehr (e.g., 1983) and the work of Nicholls (e.g., 1978) on the various conceptions of ability that children held. From this research, Nicholls saw simplicity where others had seen complexity and presented the parsimonious constructs that we all know today. Nicholls' unique contribution was to recognize that two understandings of ability existed and that previous theories had assumed one or the other. For example, self-efficacy (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume) assumes a task-involving conception of ability, whereas attribution theory (e.g., Weiner, 1972) assumes an ego-involving conception of ability. Nicholls, Maehr, Ames, and Dweck developed a theory (with their own interpretations) that recognized that both conceptions of ability need to be inherent in the theory. In addition, they recognized that individual difference variables (goal orientations) and contextual dynamics (motivational climate) were part of the same conceptual paradigm. That is the elegance of achievement goal theory. By recognizing that we each use task- or ego-involving conceptions of ability depending on the context, we have a conceptually coherent theory that encompasses both versions of the definition of success and embraces both individual difference variables (goal orientations) and the effect of the situation (motivational climate) on achievement striving.

Practical Applications

Although some nuances were found, research reviewed in this chapter has shown that harmonious passion is generally associated with more positive consequences than obsessive passion is. It would therefore seem appropriate to propose ways of facilitating harmonious passion. To promote harmonious passion, the three-step process at the core of the development of passion (see Mageau, Vallerand, Charest, et al., 2009) can be used. The three steps are, respectively, (1) activity selection, (2) activity valuation, and (3) the internalization of the activity representation in a person's identity. As seen previously, the role of the social environment at each of the three stages is crucial. Adults are in a prime position to promote children's harmonious passion, especially if they nurture children's need for autonomy and relatedness. With respect to the first step of activity selection, parents and physical educators should encourage children to perform a variety of sport activities, especially at a relatively young age (3-6 years). Later on (age 7-10 years), parents can register their children for a different activity each term. When they have tried a variety of activities and have developed sufficient knowledge to make decisions (perhaps around age 10 to 13 years), children can be encouraged to decide for themselves which activity they would like to engage in for the season. Such a variety of experiences may translate into a greater likelihood of selecting an activity that is a good fit with the child's identity and will thus later become a passion (see Mageau et al., 2009). Enjoyable experiences devoid of pressure and coercion in which children are provided with autonomy support and have the opportunity to choose by themselves their sport activity should set the stage for harmonious passion to blossom. In contrast, pressure or coercion to engage in sport or physical activity is likely to lead to the development of either amotivation (or the loss of motivation) or an obsessive passion toward the sport.

Autonomy support is also recommended for the other two stages of passion development. For instance, with respect to the second step in the passion development process, namely valuation of the selected sport activity, noncontrolling and supportive parents, physical educators, and coaches who preach by example and serve as models (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) may provide the necessary impetus to lead the young athletes to invest further in the sport activity and value it even more. The role of peers should not be underestimated because friends' influence becomes increasingly important as children move toward puberty (Damon, 1988). It should not be surprising that players on the same team have similar levels and types of passion in part because of the coach's influence but also because of the modeling influence that teammates provide. Such influence may lead to the internalization of the prevalent type of passion in that particular team environment. Similarly, a harmonious passion is likely to develop if the internalization process takes place in social environments (e.g., parents, friends, and especially coaches) that promote children's sense of autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987, 2000) by providing opportunities for choices, ownership, or “voice” regarding decisions and behaviors. For example, athletes who have recently started cross country running would be more likely to develop a harmonious passion toward this sport if their coach clearly explains to them why it is important to practice daily and gives them opportunities to choose among various practice regimens. Conversely, chances are that the same athletes would either lose their motivation for running or develop an obsessive passion if their coach pressures or coerces them to practice more or fails to explain the purpose of various training exercises.

Finally, practitioners and coaches who work with elite athletes should keep in mind that providing autonomy support is also important with high-level athletes. Indeed, by helping athletes feel autonomous by allowing them to provide input in game decisions (perhaps in the manner of Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers), the coach is likely to help maintain athletes' harmonious passion, facilitate a high level of performance, and create positive coach-athlete relationships. Coaches and consultants may believe that it is appropriate to be controlling toward high elite and professional athletes because such practices may enhance performance. Although the evidence presented in this chapter does not indicate that being controlling necessarily undermines performance, it does indicate that such behavior is likely to lead to obsessive passion and thus to some negative outcomes, such as lower levels of psychological, health, and relational well-being in athletes. In turn, negative coach-athlete relationships may have ill effects on cohesion, indirectly and negatively affect performance, and even cost the coach her or his job. Thus, creating an autonomy supportive environment may go a long way in providing positive outcomes for both athletes and coaches.

Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology

In 2008 I was asked to give the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual meeting of AASP in St. Louis, Missouri, which had the title, Whatever Happened to Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology? I decided to argue that forsaking some fundamental attributes of science was not in the best interests of scholars and practitioners in sport psychology. I believe that there is value in maintaining the attributes of parsimony, elegance, and conceptual coherence. Let me explain.

Parsimony

One of Einstein's famous quotes is that in science we should make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple! Parsimony in science simply means that we keep constructs as simple as possible. In my Coleman Griffith talk, I argued that there is a trend in sport psychology to make constructs more complex than they need to be. Some of this results from the natural desire to make constructs more applicable to the sport context, such as the efforts of Harwood and colleagues, but scholars often do not realize that by making things more “relevant” to sport they also make the constructs more complex and cause a subsequent loss of parsimony. McFee, a philosopher of science, is harshly critical of scholars in sport psychology because of their penchant for explaining phenomena with “boxes and arrows” and making things more complex than they should be (McFee, 2005). He argues that he is against the “boxes” mentality prevalent in sport psychology, where what is hoped for is a graphic model of boxes connected by arrows, as though sport psychologists knew what the boxes and arrows meant. In my address I gave several examples of complex multilevel theories (e.g., Vallerand, 2001; the hierarchical model of motivation derived from self-determination theory) of this trend toward complexity, in addition to the work of Elliot and colleagues (e.g., 1999) and Harwood and colleagues (e.g., 2008), which I criticized earlier. Is this trend toward complexity one that we should follow?

In her profile of Nobel Prize winners, Zuckerman (1977) gave several attributes of the typical prize winner, but one common attribute is particularly noteworthy: They see simplicity where other people see complexity. As an example, when Crick and Watson (1953) in their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule published their model of the double helix, Maurice Wilkins (a fellow scientist who was a rival in the quest) was surprised to see how simple the model was and is quoted to have said, “How simple, how elegant” (Watson, 1996). The quest for expanded frameworks might be valuable because we may be able to provide a better description of the complexity of motivation processes, but a cost is often present, and part of that cost is a loss of parsimony! It is well for sport scientists to remember the famous saying of William of Occam (1285-1347): “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” Known as Occam's Razor, it is a call for parsimony, which is sometimes ignored.

There are many examples of scientists in psychology “seeing simplicity” when others had noticed only complexity. These examples spur research into the phenomenon and allow us to understand it better. The example of the social facilitation paradigm is a case in point. Historically, scientists had noted that the presence of others sometimes facilitated and sometimes inhibited the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks (e.g., Triplett, 1897). But in his review of the findings, Zajonc (1965) saw simplicity when he realized that learning tasks were inhibited by the presence of others, whereas performance tasks or simple tasks were facilitated by the presence of others. Further, he argued, the presence of others creates arousal and arousal facilitates the dominant response. When learning, the dominant response was incorrect; when performing, the dominant response was correct. This simple insight suddenly made sense of the previous 70 years of conflicting research. This ability to see simplicity sometimes gives a conceptual insight into psychological (and other disciplinary) mechanisms.

Elegance

Again, Crick and Watson (1953) give a classic example of elegance, which is the attribute of being simple but profound in its implications. In their article in Nature, they concluded by stating that it had not escaped their notice that the specific pairing of the double helix they had postulated suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material! As we now know, this was the most profound scientific finding of the 20th century. The double helix solution was elegant in that it gave clear theoretical and practical meaning and changed our understanding of biological systems. Indeed, it was the birth of modern biology.

We can find many examples in psychology, too. One elegant theory is the social facilitation paradigm (Zajonc, 1965), which I discussed earlier. Zajonc demonstrated his elegant conceptual explanation with an elegant experiment. He had two groups of participants learn a complex task over many trials. One group did it in the presence of others, and the control group learned the task alone. Zajonc demonstrated that performing in the presence of others inhibited learning but facilitated later performance when compared to the control group: A simple but elegant and profound experiment demonstrated his theory. This experiment, and the later research that it stimulated (e.g., Martens, 1969), gave us insight into the reasons arousal and evaluative anxiety inhibited learning on motor tasks.

Another example of a parsimonious and elegant construct is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1977b). Self-efficacy cognitions represent a person's convictions or beliefs that he or she can successfully execute a course of action to produce a certain outcome. It is likened to a situation-specific self-confidence. But in this context, it is a simple but elegant construct that has stimulated a great deal of research into the determinants of motivation in exercise and physical activity (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume). And, of course, as I have been trying to expound, achievement goal theory in its original form is a parsimonious and elegant theory, too.

Conceptual Coherence

Parsimony and elegance are valued attributes for a theory, but conceptual coherence is an essential attribute! As we all know, theory gives meaning to data. Having an empirical paradigm that is weak on coherent constructs is not a desirable paradigm. These empirical paradigms with weak constructs, or constructs that lack conceptual coherence, are what produce the random noise in the literature against which the true signal of advancement is difficult to discern (Roberts, 1989). I must confess that in my experience with doctoral students, I find that they generally become sophisticated in research methods and statistical analyses but often struggle with understanding the psychological constructs and mechanisms about how things work psychologically. My favorite question to students who are preparing a research agenda is to ask them how they know that they are asking the right questions, or even important ones? I am reminded of the adage, If it is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well! The most important task that we can do as mentors of doctoral students is to make certain they understand that theory gives meaning to data and that statistical and research sophistication are secondary and merely tools to demonstrate the meaningfulness of theory. But they must do more than use “just any theory.” Is the theory coherent and meaningful to the question being asked? All of us have to make our own decisions about what constructs give meaning to the research that we are undertaking. My argument here is that the conceptual base should be coherent!

As an example, at the 2009 ISSP Congress in Marrakesh, Ed Deci was asked to react to some research papers, using self-determination theory as the conceptual base. When one researcher used self-determination theory to overlay his own theory to add impetus to his normal theoretical paradigm, Deci commented that it did not make much sense to do that because the theories were quite different in their conceptual base. His point was that it was better to build constructs within the conceptual paradigm used to capture the dynamics of the question being asked rather than bring in another theory and overlay the constructs of that theory over the original constructs. In other words, to give meaning to data, the theory must be conceptually coherent!

Achievement goal theory is a social-cognitive theory that was developed from the learned helplessness (mastery versus helplessness) research of Dweck (e.g., 1975), the cooperation-competition research of Ames (e.g., 1984a), the motivation research of Maehr (e.g., 1983) and the work of Nicholls (e.g., 1978) on the various conceptions of ability that children held. From this research, Nicholls saw simplicity where others had seen complexity and presented the parsimonious constructs that we all know today. Nicholls' unique contribution was to recognize that two understandings of ability existed and that previous theories had assumed one or the other. For example, self-efficacy (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume) assumes a task-involving conception of ability, whereas attribution theory (e.g., Weiner, 1972) assumes an ego-involving conception of ability. Nicholls, Maehr, Ames, and Dweck developed a theory (with their own interpretations) that recognized that both conceptions of ability need to be inherent in the theory. In addition, they recognized that individual difference variables (goal orientations) and contextual dynamics (motivational climate) were part of the same conceptual paradigm. That is the elegance of achievement goal theory. By recognizing that we each use task- or ego-involving conceptions of ability depending on the context, we have a conceptually coherent theory that encompasses both versions of the definition of success and embraces both individual difference variables (goal orientations) and the effect of the situation (motivational climate) on achievement striving.

Practical Applications

Although some nuances were found, research reviewed in this chapter has shown that harmonious passion is generally associated with more positive consequences than obsessive passion is. It would therefore seem appropriate to propose ways of facilitating harmonious passion. To promote harmonious passion, the three-step process at the core of the development of passion (see Mageau, Vallerand, Charest, et al., 2009) can be used. The three steps are, respectively, (1) activity selection, (2) activity valuation, and (3) the internalization of the activity representation in a person's identity. As seen previously, the role of the social environment at each of the three stages is crucial. Adults are in a prime position to promote children's harmonious passion, especially if they nurture children's need for autonomy and relatedness. With respect to the first step of activity selection, parents and physical educators should encourage children to perform a variety of sport activities, especially at a relatively young age (3-6 years). Later on (age 7-10 years), parents can register their children for a different activity each term. When they have tried a variety of activities and have developed sufficient knowledge to make decisions (perhaps around age 10 to 13 years), children can be encouraged to decide for themselves which activity they would like to engage in for the season. Such a variety of experiences may translate into a greater likelihood of selecting an activity that is a good fit with the child's identity and will thus later become a passion (see Mageau et al., 2009). Enjoyable experiences devoid of pressure and coercion in which children are provided with autonomy support and have the opportunity to choose by themselves their sport activity should set the stage for harmonious passion to blossom. In contrast, pressure or coercion to engage in sport or physical activity is likely to lead to the development of either amotivation (or the loss of motivation) or an obsessive passion toward the sport.

Autonomy support is also recommended for the other two stages of passion development. For instance, with respect to the second step in the passion development process, namely valuation of the selected sport activity, noncontrolling and supportive parents, physical educators, and coaches who preach by example and serve as models (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) may provide the necessary impetus to lead the young athletes to invest further in the sport activity and value it even more. The role of peers should not be underestimated because friends' influence becomes increasingly important as children move toward puberty (Damon, 1988). It should not be surprising that players on the same team have similar levels and types of passion in part because of the coach's influence but also because of the modeling influence that teammates provide. Such influence may lead to the internalization of the prevalent type of passion in that particular team environment. Similarly, a harmonious passion is likely to develop if the internalization process takes place in social environments (e.g., parents, friends, and especially coaches) that promote children's sense of autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987, 2000) by providing opportunities for choices, ownership, or “voice” regarding decisions and behaviors. For example, athletes who have recently started cross country running would be more likely to develop a harmonious passion toward this sport if their coach clearly explains to them why it is important to practice daily and gives them opportunities to choose among various practice regimens. Conversely, chances are that the same athletes would either lose their motivation for running or develop an obsessive passion if their coach pressures or coerces them to practice more or fails to explain the purpose of various training exercises.

Finally, practitioners and coaches who work with elite athletes should keep in mind that providing autonomy support is also important with high-level athletes. Indeed, by helping athletes feel autonomous by allowing them to provide input in game decisions (perhaps in the manner of Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers), the coach is likely to help maintain athletes' harmonious passion, facilitate a high level of performance, and create positive coach-athlete relationships. Coaches and consultants may believe that it is appropriate to be controlling toward high elite and professional athletes because such practices may enhance performance. Although the evidence presented in this chapter does not indicate that being controlling necessarily undermines performance, it does indicate that such behavior is likely to lead to obsessive passion and thus to some negative outcomes, such as lower levels of psychological, health, and relational well-being in athletes. In turn, negative coach-athlete relationships may have ill effects on cohesion, indirectly and negatively affect performance, and even cost the coach her or his job. Thus, creating an autonomy supportive environment may go a long way in providing positive outcomes for both athletes and coaches.

Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology

In 2008 I was asked to give the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual meeting of AASP in St. Louis, Missouri, which had the title, Whatever Happened to Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology? I decided to argue that forsaking some fundamental attributes of science was not in the best interests of scholars and practitioners in sport psychology. I believe that there is value in maintaining the attributes of parsimony, elegance, and conceptual coherence. Let me explain.

Parsimony

One of Einstein's famous quotes is that in science we should make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple! Parsimony in science simply means that we keep constructs as simple as possible. In my Coleman Griffith talk, I argued that there is a trend in sport psychology to make constructs more complex than they need to be. Some of this results from the natural desire to make constructs more applicable to the sport context, such as the efforts of Harwood and colleagues, but scholars often do not realize that by making things more “relevant” to sport they also make the constructs more complex and cause a subsequent loss of parsimony. McFee, a philosopher of science, is harshly critical of scholars in sport psychology because of their penchant for explaining phenomena with “boxes and arrows” and making things more complex than they should be (McFee, 2005). He argues that he is against the “boxes” mentality prevalent in sport psychology, where what is hoped for is a graphic model of boxes connected by arrows, as though sport psychologists knew what the boxes and arrows meant. In my address I gave several examples of complex multilevel theories (e.g., Vallerand, 2001; the hierarchical model of motivation derived from self-determination theory) of this trend toward complexity, in addition to the work of Elliot and colleagues (e.g., 1999) and Harwood and colleagues (e.g., 2008), which I criticized earlier. Is this trend toward complexity one that we should follow?

In her profile of Nobel Prize winners, Zuckerman (1977) gave several attributes of the typical prize winner, but one common attribute is particularly noteworthy: They see simplicity where other people see complexity. As an example, when Crick and Watson (1953) in their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule published their model of the double helix, Maurice Wilkins (a fellow scientist who was a rival in the quest) was surprised to see how simple the model was and is quoted to have said, “How simple, how elegant” (Watson, 1996). The quest for expanded frameworks might be valuable because we may be able to provide a better description of the complexity of motivation processes, but a cost is often present, and part of that cost is a loss of parsimony! It is well for sport scientists to remember the famous saying of William of Occam (1285-1347): “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” Known as Occam's Razor, it is a call for parsimony, which is sometimes ignored.

There are many examples of scientists in psychology “seeing simplicity” when others had noticed only complexity. These examples spur research into the phenomenon and allow us to understand it better. The example of the social facilitation paradigm is a case in point. Historically, scientists had noted that the presence of others sometimes facilitated and sometimes inhibited the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks (e.g., Triplett, 1897). But in his review of the findings, Zajonc (1965) saw simplicity when he realized that learning tasks were inhibited by the presence of others, whereas performance tasks or simple tasks were facilitated by the presence of others. Further, he argued, the presence of others creates arousal and arousal facilitates the dominant response. When learning, the dominant response was incorrect; when performing, the dominant response was correct. This simple insight suddenly made sense of the previous 70 years of conflicting research. This ability to see simplicity sometimes gives a conceptual insight into psychological (and other disciplinary) mechanisms.

Elegance

Again, Crick and Watson (1953) give a classic example of elegance, which is the attribute of being simple but profound in its implications. In their article in Nature, they concluded by stating that it had not escaped their notice that the specific pairing of the double helix they had postulated suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material! As we now know, this was the most profound scientific finding of the 20th century. The double helix solution was elegant in that it gave clear theoretical and practical meaning and changed our understanding of biological systems. Indeed, it was the birth of modern biology.

We can find many examples in psychology, too. One elegant theory is the social facilitation paradigm (Zajonc, 1965), which I discussed earlier. Zajonc demonstrated his elegant conceptual explanation with an elegant experiment. He had two groups of participants learn a complex task over many trials. One group did it in the presence of others, and the control group learned the task alone. Zajonc demonstrated that performing in the presence of others inhibited learning but facilitated later performance when compared to the control group: A simple but elegant and profound experiment demonstrated his theory. This experiment, and the later research that it stimulated (e.g., Martens, 1969), gave us insight into the reasons arousal and evaluative anxiety inhibited learning on motor tasks.

Another example of a parsimonious and elegant construct is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1977b). Self-efficacy cognitions represent a person's convictions or beliefs that he or she can successfully execute a course of action to produce a certain outcome. It is likened to a situation-specific self-confidence. But in this context, it is a simple but elegant construct that has stimulated a great deal of research into the determinants of motivation in exercise and physical activity (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume). And, of course, as I have been trying to expound, achievement goal theory in its original form is a parsimonious and elegant theory, too.

Conceptual Coherence

Parsimony and elegance are valued attributes for a theory, but conceptual coherence is an essential attribute! As we all know, theory gives meaning to data. Having an empirical paradigm that is weak on coherent constructs is not a desirable paradigm. These empirical paradigms with weak constructs, or constructs that lack conceptual coherence, are what produce the random noise in the literature against which the true signal of advancement is difficult to discern (Roberts, 1989). I must confess that in my experience with doctoral students, I find that they generally become sophisticated in research methods and statistical analyses but often struggle with understanding the psychological constructs and mechanisms about how things work psychologically. My favorite question to students who are preparing a research agenda is to ask them how they know that they are asking the right questions, or even important ones? I am reminded of the adage, If it is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well! The most important task that we can do as mentors of doctoral students is to make certain they understand that theory gives meaning to data and that statistical and research sophistication are secondary and merely tools to demonstrate the meaningfulness of theory. But they must do more than use “just any theory.” Is the theory coherent and meaningful to the question being asked? All of us have to make our own decisions about what constructs give meaning to the research that we are undertaking. My argument here is that the conceptual base should be coherent!

As an example, at the 2009 ISSP Congress in Marrakesh, Ed Deci was asked to react to some research papers, using self-determination theory as the conceptual base. When one researcher used self-determination theory to overlay his own theory to add impetus to his normal theoretical paradigm, Deci commented that it did not make much sense to do that because the theories were quite different in their conceptual base. His point was that it was better to build constructs within the conceptual paradigm used to capture the dynamics of the question being asked rather than bring in another theory and overlay the constructs of that theory over the original constructs. In other words, to give meaning to data, the theory must be conceptually coherent!

Achievement goal theory is a social-cognitive theory that was developed from the learned helplessness (mastery versus helplessness) research of Dweck (e.g., 1975), the cooperation-competition research of Ames (e.g., 1984a), the motivation research of Maehr (e.g., 1983) and the work of Nicholls (e.g., 1978) on the various conceptions of ability that children held. From this research, Nicholls saw simplicity where others had seen complexity and presented the parsimonious constructs that we all know today. Nicholls' unique contribution was to recognize that two understandings of ability existed and that previous theories had assumed one or the other. For example, self-efficacy (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume) assumes a task-involving conception of ability, whereas attribution theory (e.g., Weiner, 1972) assumes an ego-involving conception of ability. Nicholls, Maehr, Ames, and Dweck developed a theory (with their own interpretations) that recognized that both conceptions of ability need to be inherent in the theory. In addition, they recognized that individual difference variables (goal orientations) and contextual dynamics (motivational climate) were part of the same conceptual paradigm. That is the elegance of achievement goal theory. By recognizing that we each use task- or ego-involving conceptions of ability depending on the context, we have a conceptually coherent theory that encompasses both versions of the definition of success and embraces both individual difference variables (goal orientations) and the effect of the situation (motivational climate) on achievement striving.

Practical Applications

Although some nuances were found, research reviewed in this chapter has shown that harmonious passion is generally associated with more positive consequences than obsessive passion is. It would therefore seem appropriate to propose ways of facilitating harmonious passion. To promote harmonious passion, the three-step process at the core of the development of passion (see Mageau, Vallerand, Charest, et al., 2009) can be used. The three steps are, respectively, (1) activity selection, (2) activity valuation, and (3) the internalization of the activity representation in a person's identity. As seen previously, the role of the social environment at each of the three stages is crucial. Adults are in a prime position to promote children's harmonious passion, especially if they nurture children's need for autonomy and relatedness. With respect to the first step of activity selection, parents and physical educators should encourage children to perform a variety of sport activities, especially at a relatively young age (3-6 years). Later on (age 7-10 years), parents can register their children for a different activity each term. When they have tried a variety of activities and have developed sufficient knowledge to make decisions (perhaps around age 10 to 13 years), children can be encouraged to decide for themselves which activity they would like to engage in for the season. Such a variety of experiences may translate into a greater likelihood of selecting an activity that is a good fit with the child's identity and will thus later become a passion (see Mageau et al., 2009). Enjoyable experiences devoid of pressure and coercion in which children are provided with autonomy support and have the opportunity to choose by themselves their sport activity should set the stage for harmonious passion to blossom. In contrast, pressure or coercion to engage in sport or physical activity is likely to lead to the development of either amotivation (or the loss of motivation) or an obsessive passion toward the sport.

Autonomy support is also recommended for the other two stages of passion development. For instance, with respect to the second step in the passion development process, namely valuation of the selected sport activity, noncontrolling and supportive parents, physical educators, and coaches who preach by example and serve as models (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) may provide the necessary impetus to lead the young athletes to invest further in the sport activity and value it even more. The role of peers should not be underestimated because friends' influence becomes increasingly important as children move toward puberty (Damon, 1988). It should not be surprising that players on the same team have similar levels and types of passion in part because of the coach's influence but also because of the modeling influence that teammates provide. Such influence may lead to the internalization of the prevalent type of passion in that particular team environment. Similarly, a harmonious passion is likely to develop if the internalization process takes place in social environments (e.g., parents, friends, and especially coaches) that promote children's sense of autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987, 2000) by providing opportunities for choices, ownership, or “voice” regarding decisions and behaviors. For example, athletes who have recently started cross country running would be more likely to develop a harmonious passion toward this sport if their coach clearly explains to them why it is important to practice daily and gives them opportunities to choose among various practice regimens. Conversely, chances are that the same athletes would either lose their motivation for running or develop an obsessive passion if their coach pressures or coerces them to practice more or fails to explain the purpose of various training exercises.

Finally, practitioners and coaches who work with elite athletes should keep in mind that providing autonomy support is also important with high-level athletes. Indeed, by helping athletes feel autonomous by allowing them to provide input in game decisions (perhaps in the manner of Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers), the coach is likely to help maintain athletes' harmonious passion, facilitate a high level of performance, and create positive coach-athlete relationships. Coaches and consultants may believe that it is appropriate to be controlling toward high elite and professional athletes because such practices may enhance performance. Although the evidence presented in this chapter does not indicate that being controlling necessarily undermines performance, it does indicate that such behavior is likely to lead to obsessive passion and thus to some negative outcomes, such as lower levels of psychological, health, and relational well-being in athletes. In turn, negative coach-athlete relationships may have ill effects on cohesion, indirectly and negatively affect performance, and even cost the coach her or his job. Thus, creating an autonomy supportive environment may go a long way in providing positive outcomes for both athletes and coaches.

Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology

In 2008 I was asked to give the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual meeting of AASP in St. Louis, Missouri, which had the title, Whatever Happened to Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology? I decided to argue that forsaking some fundamental attributes of science was not in the best interests of scholars and practitioners in sport psychology. I believe that there is value in maintaining the attributes of parsimony, elegance, and conceptual coherence. Let me explain.

Parsimony

One of Einstein's famous quotes is that in science we should make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple! Parsimony in science simply means that we keep constructs as simple as possible. In my Coleman Griffith talk, I argued that there is a trend in sport psychology to make constructs more complex than they need to be. Some of this results from the natural desire to make constructs more applicable to the sport context, such as the efforts of Harwood and colleagues, but scholars often do not realize that by making things more “relevant” to sport they also make the constructs more complex and cause a subsequent loss of parsimony. McFee, a philosopher of science, is harshly critical of scholars in sport psychology because of their penchant for explaining phenomena with “boxes and arrows” and making things more complex than they should be (McFee, 2005). He argues that he is against the “boxes” mentality prevalent in sport psychology, where what is hoped for is a graphic model of boxes connected by arrows, as though sport psychologists knew what the boxes and arrows meant. In my address I gave several examples of complex multilevel theories (e.g., Vallerand, 2001; the hierarchical model of motivation derived from self-determination theory) of this trend toward complexity, in addition to the work of Elliot and colleagues (e.g., 1999) and Harwood and colleagues (e.g., 2008), which I criticized earlier. Is this trend toward complexity one that we should follow?

In her profile of Nobel Prize winners, Zuckerman (1977) gave several attributes of the typical prize winner, but one common attribute is particularly noteworthy: They see simplicity where other people see complexity. As an example, when Crick and Watson (1953) in their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule published their model of the double helix, Maurice Wilkins (a fellow scientist who was a rival in the quest) was surprised to see how simple the model was and is quoted to have said, “How simple, how elegant” (Watson, 1996). The quest for expanded frameworks might be valuable because we may be able to provide a better description of the complexity of motivation processes, but a cost is often present, and part of that cost is a loss of parsimony! It is well for sport scientists to remember the famous saying of William of Occam (1285-1347): “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” Known as Occam's Razor, it is a call for parsimony, which is sometimes ignored.

There are many examples of scientists in psychology “seeing simplicity” when others had noticed only complexity. These examples spur research into the phenomenon and allow us to understand it better. The example of the social facilitation paradigm is a case in point. Historically, scientists had noted that the presence of others sometimes facilitated and sometimes inhibited the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks (e.g., Triplett, 1897). But in his review of the findings, Zajonc (1965) saw simplicity when he realized that learning tasks were inhibited by the presence of others, whereas performance tasks or simple tasks were facilitated by the presence of others. Further, he argued, the presence of others creates arousal and arousal facilitates the dominant response. When learning, the dominant response was incorrect; when performing, the dominant response was correct. This simple insight suddenly made sense of the previous 70 years of conflicting research. This ability to see simplicity sometimes gives a conceptual insight into psychological (and other disciplinary) mechanisms.

Elegance

Again, Crick and Watson (1953) give a classic example of elegance, which is the attribute of being simple but profound in its implications. In their article in Nature, they concluded by stating that it had not escaped their notice that the specific pairing of the double helix they had postulated suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material! As we now know, this was the most profound scientific finding of the 20th century. The double helix solution was elegant in that it gave clear theoretical and practical meaning and changed our understanding of biological systems. Indeed, it was the birth of modern biology.

We can find many examples in psychology, too. One elegant theory is the social facilitation paradigm (Zajonc, 1965), which I discussed earlier. Zajonc demonstrated his elegant conceptual explanation with an elegant experiment. He had two groups of participants learn a complex task over many trials. One group did it in the presence of others, and the control group learned the task alone. Zajonc demonstrated that performing in the presence of others inhibited learning but facilitated later performance when compared to the control group: A simple but elegant and profound experiment demonstrated his theory. This experiment, and the later research that it stimulated (e.g., Martens, 1969), gave us insight into the reasons arousal and evaluative anxiety inhibited learning on motor tasks.

Another example of a parsimonious and elegant construct is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1977b). Self-efficacy cognitions represent a person's convictions or beliefs that he or she can successfully execute a course of action to produce a certain outcome. It is likened to a situation-specific self-confidence. But in this context, it is a simple but elegant construct that has stimulated a great deal of research into the determinants of motivation in exercise and physical activity (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume). And, of course, as I have been trying to expound, achievement goal theory in its original form is a parsimonious and elegant theory, too.

Conceptual Coherence

Parsimony and elegance are valued attributes for a theory, but conceptual coherence is an essential attribute! As we all know, theory gives meaning to data. Having an empirical paradigm that is weak on coherent constructs is not a desirable paradigm. These empirical paradigms with weak constructs, or constructs that lack conceptual coherence, are what produce the random noise in the literature against which the true signal of advancement is difficult to discern (Roberts, 1989). I must confess that in my experience with doctoral students, I find that they generally become sophisticated in research methods and statistical analyses but often struggle with understanding the psychological constructs and mechanisms about how things work psychologically. My favorite question to students who are preparing a research agenda is to ask them how they know that they are asking the right questions, or even important ones? I am reminded of the adage, If it is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well! The most important task that we can do as mentors of doctoral students is to make certain they understand that theory gives meaning to data and that statistical and research sophistication are secondary and merely tools to demonstrate the meaningfulness of theory. But they must do more than use “just any theory.” Is the theory coherent and meaningful to the question being asked? All of us have to make our own decisions about what constructs give meaning to the research that we are undertaking. My argument here is that the conceptual base should be coherent!

As an example, at the 2009 ISSP Congress in Marrakesh, Ed Deci was asked to react to some research papers, using self-determination theory as the conceptual base. When one researcher used self-determination theory to overlay his own theory to add impetus to his normal theoretical paradigm, Deci commented that it did not make much sense to do that because the theories were quite different in their conceptual base. His point was that it was better to build constructs within the conceptual paradigm used to capture the dynamics of the question being asked rather than bring in another theory and overlay the constructs of that theory over the original constructs. In other words, to give meaning to data, the theory must be conceptually coherent!

Achievement goal theory is a social-cognitive theory that was developed from the learned helplessness (mastery versus helplessness) research of Dweck (e.g., 1975), the cooperation-competition research of Ames (e.g., 1984a), the motivation research of Maehr (e.g., 1983) and the work of Nicholls (e.g., 1978) on the various conceptions of ability that children held. From this research, Nicholls saw simplicity where others had seen complexity and presented the parsimonious constructs that we all know today. Nicholls' unique contribution was to recognize that two understandings of ability existed and that previous theories had assumed one or the other. For example, self-efficacy (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume) assumes a task-involving conception of ability, whereas attribution theory (e.g., Weiner, 1972) assumes an ego-involving conception of ability. Nicholls, Maehr, Ames, and Dweck developed a theory (with their own interpretations) that recognized that both conceptions of ability need to be inherent in the theory. In addition, they recognized that individual difference variables (goal orientations) and contextual dynamics (motivational climate) were part of the same conceptual paradigm. That is the elegance of achievement goal theory. By recognizing that we each use task- or ego-involving conceptions of ability depending on the context, we have a conceptually coherent theory that encompasses both versions of the definition of success and embraces both individual difference variables (goal orientations) and the effect of the situation (motivational climate) on achievement striving.

Practical Applications

Although some nuances were found, research reviewed in this chapter has shown that harmonious passion is generally associated with more positive consequences than obsessive passion is. It would therefore seem appropriate to propose ways of facilitating harmonious passion. To promote harmonious passion, the three-step process at the core of the development of passion (see Mageau, Vallerand, Charest, et al., 2009) can be used. The three steps are, respectively, (1) activity selection, (2) activity valuation, and (3) the internalization of the activity representation in a person's identity. As seen previously, the role of the social environment at each of the three stages is crucial. Adults are in a prime position to promote children's harmonious passion, especially if they nurture children's need for autonomy and relatedness. With respect to the first step of activity selection, parents and physical educators should encourage children to perform a variety of sport activities, especially at a relatively young age (3-6 years). Later on (age 7-10 years), parents can register their children for a different activity each term. When they have tried a variety of activities and have developed sufficient knowledge to make decisions (perhaps around age 10 to 13 years), children can be encouraged to decide for themselves which activity they would like to engage in for the season. Such a variety of experiences may translate into a greater likelihood of selecting an activity that is a good fit with the child's identity and will thus later become a passion (see Mageau et al., 2009). Enjoyable experiences devoid of pressure and coercion in which children are provided with autonomy support and have the opportunity to choose by themselves their sport activity should set the stage for harmonious passion to blossom. In contrast, pressure or coercion to engage in sport or physical activity is likely to lead to the development of either amotivation (or the loss of motivation) or an obsessive passion toward the sport.

Autonomy support is also recommended for the other two stages of passion development. For instance, with respect to the second step in the passion development process, namely valuation of the selected sport activity, noncontrolling and supportive parents, physical educators, and coaches who preach by example and serve as models (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) may provide the necessary impetus to lead the young athletes to invest further in the sport activity and value it even more. The role of peers should not be underestimated because friends' influence becomes increasingly important as children move toward puberty (Damon, 1988). It should not be surprising that players on the same team have similar levels and types of passion in part because of the coach's influence but also because of the modeling influence that teammates provide. Such influence may lead to the internalization of the prevalent type of passion in that particular team environment. Similarly, a harmonious passion is likely to develop if the internalization process takes place in social environments (e.g., parents, friends, and especially coaches) that promote children's sense of autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987, 2000) by providing opportunities for choices, ownership, or “voice” regarding decisions and behaviors. For example, athletes who have recently started cross country running would be more likely to develop a harmonious passion toward this sport if their coach clearly explains to them why it is important to practice daily and gives them opportunities to choose among various practice regimens. Conversely, chances are that the same athletes would either lose their motivation for running or develop an obsessive passion if their coach pressures or coerces them to practice more or fails to explain the purpose of various training exercises.

Finally, practitioners and coaches who work with elite athletes should keep in mind that providing autonomy support is also important with high-level athletes. Indeed, by helping athletes feel autonomous by allowing them to provide input in game decisions (perhaps in the manner of Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers), the coach is likely to help maintain athletes' harmonious passion, facilitate a high level of performance, and create positive coach-athlete relationships. Coaches and consultants may believe that it is appropriate to be controlling toward high elite and professional athletes because such practices may enhance performance. Although the evidence presented in this chapter does not indicate that being controlling necessarily undermines performance, it does indicate that such behavior is likely to lead to obsessive passion and thus to some negative outcomes, such as lower levels of psychological, health, and relational well-being in athletes. In turn, negative coach-athlete relationships may have ill effects on cohesion, indirectly and negatively affect performance, and even cost the coach her or his job. Thus, creating an autonomy supportive environment may go a long way in providing positive outcomes for both athletes and coaches.

Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology

In 2008 I was asked to give the Coleman Griffith Lecture at the annual meeting of AASP in St. Louis, Missouri, which had the title, Whatever Happened to Parsimony, Elegance, and Conceptual Coherence in Sport Psychology? I decided to argue that forsaking some fundamental attributes of science was not in the best interests of scholars and practitioners in sport psychology. I believe that there is value in maintaining the attributes of parsimony, elegance, and conceptual coherence. Let me explain.

Parsimony

One of Einstein's famous quotes is that in science we should make everything as simple as possible, but not too simple! Parsimony in science simply means that we keep constructs as simple as possible. In my Coleman Griffith talk, I argued that there is a trend in sport psychology to make constructs more complex than they need to be. Some of this results from the natural desire to make constructs more applicable to the sport context, such as the efforts of Harwood and colleagues, but scholars often do not realize that by making things more “relevant” to sport they also make the constructs more complex and cause a subsequent loss of parsimony. McFee, a philosopher of science, is harshly critical of scholars in sport psychology because of their penchant for explaining phenomena with “boxes and arrows” and making things more complex than they should be (McFee, 2005). He argues that he is against the “boxes” mentality prevalent in sport psychology, where what is hoped for is a graphic model of boxes connected by arrows, as though sport psychologists knew what the boxes and arrows meant. In my address I gave several examples of complex multilevel theories (e.g., Vallerand, 2001; the hierarchical model of motivation derived from self-determination theory) of this trend toward complexity, in addition to the work of Elliot and colleagues (e.g., 1999) and Harwood and colleagues (e.g., 2008), which I criticized earlier. Is this trend toward complexity one that we should follow?

In her profile of Nobel Prize winners, Zuckerman (1977) gave several attributes of the typical prize winner, but one common attribute is particularly noteworthy: They see simplicity where other people see complexity. As an example, when Crick and Watson (1953) in their quest to discover the structure of the DNA molecule published their model of the double helix, Maurice Wilkins (a fellow scientist who was a rival in the quest) was surprised to see how simple the model was and is quoted to have said, “How simple, how elegant” (Watson, 1996). The quest for expanded frameworks might be valuable because we may be able to provide a better description of the complexity of motivation processes, but a cost is often present, and part of that cost is a loss of parsimony! It is well for sport scientists to remember the famous saying of William of Occam (1285-1347): “Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.” Known as Occam's Razor, it is a call for parsimony, which is sometimes ignored.

There are many examples of scientists in psychology “seeing simplicity” when others had noticed only complexity. These examples spur research into the phenomenon and allow us to understand it better. The example of the social facilitation paradigm is a case in point. Historically, scientists had noted that the presence of others sometimes facilitated and sometimes inhibited the performance of individuals on a variety of tasks (e.g., Triplett, 1897). But in his review of the findings, Zajonc (1965) saw simplicity when he realized that learning tasks were inhibited by the presence of others, whereas performance tasks or simple tasks were facilitated by the presence of others. Further, he argued, the presence of others creates arousal and arousal facilitates the dominant response. When learning, the dominant response was incorrect; when performing, the dominant response was correct. This simple insight suddenly made sense of the previous 70 years of conflicting research. This ability to see simplicity sometimes gives a conceptual insight into psychological (and other disciplinary) mechanisms.

Elegance

Again, Crick and Watson (1953) give a classic example of elegance, which is the attribute of being simple but profound in its implications. In their article in Nature, they concluded by stating that it had not escaped their notice that the specific pairing of the double helix they had postulated suggested a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material! As we now know, this was the most profound scientific finding of the 20th century. The double helix solution was elegant in that it gave clear theoretical and practical meaning and changed our understanding of biological systems. Indeed, it was the birth of modern biology.

We can find many examples in psychology, too. One elegant theory is the social facilitation paradigm (Zajonc, 1965), which I discussed earlier. Zajonc demonstrated his elegant conceptual explanation with an elegant experiment. He had two groups of participants learn a complex task over many trials. One group did it in the presence of others, and the control group learned the task alone. Zajonc demonstrated that performing in the presence of others inhibited learning but facilitated later performance when compared to the control group: A simple but elegant and profound experiment demonstrated his theory. This experiment, and the later research that it stimulated (e.g., Martens, 1969), gave us insight into the reasons arousal and evaluative anxiety inhibited learning on motor tasks.

Another example of a parsimonious and elegant construct is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1977b). Self-efficacy cognitions represent a person's convictions or beliefs that he or she can successfully execute a course of action to produce a certain outcome. It is likened to a situation-specific self-confidence. But in this context, it is a simple but elegant construct that has stimulated a great deal of research into the determinants of motivation in exercise and physical activity (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume). And, of course, as I have been trying to expound, achievement goal theory in its original form is a parsimonious and elegant theory, too.

Conceptual Coherence

Parsimony and elegance are valued attributes for a theory, but conceptual coherence is an essential attribute! As we all know, theory gives meaning to data. Having an empirical paradigm that is weak on coherent constructs is not a desirable paradigm. These empirical paradigms with weak constructs, or constructs that lack conceptual coherence, are what produce the random noise in the literature against which the true signal of advancement is difficult to discern (Roberts, 1989). I must confess that in my experience with doctoral students, I find that they generally become sophisticated in research methods and statistical analyses but often struggle with understanding the psychological constructs and mechanisms about how things work psychologically. My favorite question to students who are preparing a research agenda is to ask them how they know that they are asking the right questions, or even important ones? I am reminded of the adage, If it is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well! The most important task that we can do as mentors of doctoral students is to make certain they understand that theory gives meaning to data and that statistical and research sophistication are secondary and merely tools to demonstrate the meaningfulness of theory. But they must do more than use “just any theory.” Is the theory coherent and meaningful to the question being asked? All of us have to make our own decisions about what constructs give meaning to the research that we are undertaking. My argument here is that the conceptual base should be coherent!

As an example, at the 2009 ISSP Congress in Marrakesh, Ed Deci was asked to react to some research papers, using self-determination theory as the conceptual base. When one researcher used self-determination theory to overlay his own theory to add impetus to his normal theoretical paradigm, Deci commented that it did not make much sense to do that because the theories were quite different in their conceptual base. His point was that it was better to build constructs within the conceptual paradigm used to capture the dynamics of the question being asked rather than bring in another theory and overlay the constructs of that theory over the original constructs. In other words, to give meaning to data, the theory must be conceptually coherent!

Achievement goal theory is a social-cognitive theory that was developed from the learned helplessness (mastery versus helplessness) research of Dweck (e.g., 1975), the cooperation-competition research of Ames (e.g., 1984a), the motivation research of Maehr (e.g., 1983) and the work of Nicholls (e.g., 1978) on the various conceptions of ability that children held. From this research, Nicholls saw simplicity where others had seen complexity and presented the parsimonious constructs that we all know today. Nicholls' unique contribution was to recognize that two understandings of ability existed and that previous theories had assumed one or the other. For example, self-efficacy (see Gilson & Feltz, this volume) assumes a task-involving conception of ability, whereas attribution theory (e.g., Weiner, 1972) assumes an ego-involving conception of ability. Nicholls, Maehr, Ames, and Dweck developed a theory (with their own interpretations) that recognized that both conceptions of ability need to be inherent in the theory. In addition, they recognized that individual difference variables (goal orientations) and contextual dynamics (motivational climate) were part of the same conceptual paradigm. That is the elegance of achievement goal theory. By recognizing that we each use task- or ego-involving conceptions of ability depending on the context, we have a conceptually coherent theory that encompasses both versions of the definition of success and embraces both individual difference variables (goal orientations) and the effect of the situation (motivational climate) on achievement striving.

Practical Applications

Although some nuances were found, research reviewed in this chapter has shown that harmonious passion is generally associated with more positive consequences than obsessive passion is. It would therefore seem appropriate to propose ways of facilitating harmonious passion. To promote harmonious passion, the three-step process at the core of the development of passion (see Mageau, Vallerand, Charest, et al., 2009) can be used. The three steps are, respectively, (1) activity selection, (2) activity valuation, and (3) the internalization of the activity representation in a person's identity. As seen previously, the role of the social environment at each of the three stages is crucial. Adults are in a prime position to promote children's harmonious passion, especially if they nurture children's need for autonomy and relatedness. With respect to the first step of activity selection, parents and physical educators should encourage children to perform a variety of sport activities, especially at a relatively young age (3-6 years). Later on (age 7-10 years), parents can register their children for a different activity each term. When they have tried a variety of activities and have developed sufficient knowledge to make decisions (perhaps around age 10 to 13 years), children can be encouraged to decide for themselves which activity they would like to engage in for the season. Such a variety of experiences may translate into a greater likelihood of selecting an activity that is a good fit with the child's identity and will thus later become a passion (see Mageau et al., 2009). Enjoyable experiences devoid of pressure and coercion in which children are provided with autonomy support and have the opportunity to choose by themselves their sport activity should set the stage for harmonious passion to blossom. In contrast, pressure or coercion to engage in sport or physical activity is likely to lead to the development of either amotivation (or the loss of motivation) or an obsessive passion toward the sport.

Autonomy support is also recommended for the other two stages of passion development. For instance, with respect to the second step in the passion development process, namely valuation of the selected sport activity, noncontrolling and supportive parents, physical educators, and coaches who preach by example and serve as models (e.g., Bandura, 1977a) may provide the necessary impetus to lead the young athletes to invest further in the sport activity and value it even more. The role of peers should not be underestimated because friends' influence becomes increasingly important as children move toward puberty (Damon, 1988). It should not be surprising that players on the same team have similar levels and types of passion in part because of the coach's influence but also because of the modeling influence that teammates provide. Such influence may lead to the internalization of the prevalent type of passion in that particular team environment. Similarly, a harmonious passion is likely to develop if the internalization process takes place in social environments (e.g., parents, friends, and especially coaches) that promote children's sense of autonomy (Deci & Ryan, 1987, 2000) by providing opportunities for choices, ownership, or “voice” regarding decisions and behaviors. For example, athletes who have recently started cross country running would be more likely to develop a harmonious passion toward this sport if their coach clearly explains to them why it is important to practice daily and gives them opportunities to choose among various practice regimens. Conversely, chances are that the same athletes would either lose their motivation for running or develop an obsessive passion if their coach pressures or coerces them to practice more or fails to explain the purpose of various training exercises.

Finally, practitioners and coaches who work with elite athletes should keep in mind that providing autonomy support is also important with high-level athletes. Indeed, by helping athletes feel autonomous by allowing them to provide input in game decisions (perhaps in the manner of Phil Jackson of the Los Angeles Lakers), the coach is likely to help maintain athletes' harmonious passion, facilitate a high level of performance, and create positive coach-athlete relationships. Coaches and consultants may believe that it is appropriate to be controlling toward high elite and professional athletes because such practices may enhance performance. Although the evidence presented in this chapter does not indicate that being controlling necessarily undermines performance, it does indicate that such behavior is likely to lead to obsessive passion and thus to some negative outcomes, such as lower levels of psychological, health, and relational well-being in athletes. In turn, negative coach-athlete relationships may have ill effects on cohesion, indirectly and negatively affect performance, and even cost the coach her or his job. Thus, creating an autonomy supportive environment may go a long way in providing positive outcomes for both athletes and coaches.