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Self-Talk and Sports Performance: A Meta-Analysis
Abstract
Based on the premise that what people think influences their actions, self-talk strategies have been developed to direct and facilitate human performance. In this article, we present a meta-analytic review of the effects of self-talk interventions on task performance in sport and possible factors that may moderate the effectiveness of self-talk. A total of 32 studies yielding 62 effect sizes were included in the final meta-analytic pool. The analysis revealed a positive moderate effect size (ES = .48). The moderator analyses showed that self-talk interventions were more effective for tasks involving relatively fine, compared with relatively gross, motor demands, and for novel, compared with well-learned, tasks. Instructional self-talk was more effective for fine tasks than was motivational self-talk; moreover, instructional self-talk was more effective for fine tasks rather than gross tasks. Finally, interventions including self-talk training were more effective than those not including self-talk training. The results of this study establish the effectiveness of self-talk in sport, encourage the use of self-talk as a strategy to facilitate learning and enhance performance, and provide new research directions.
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“Teaching concentration can increase youth athletes’ abilities to focus, as can self-talk, and linking the association between positive self-talk and performance in youth athletes is paramount (Hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011).”
From Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) with Psychological Skills Training (PST): a case study (2025) · cites this paper as Hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011
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“The review team formulated search terms using the titles, abstracts, and keywords of existing meta-analyses (Hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011; Kyllo & Landers, 1995; Levin et al., 2012),”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialEffects of Psychological and Psychosocial Interventions on Sport Performance: A Meta-Analysis
Brown, D. J. W., & Fletcher, D. (2016) · Sports Medicine · doi:10.1007/s40279-016-0552-7 · Cited by 247
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“It is also comparable to the effects from other meta-analyses investigating effects of psychological interventions on sports performance, such as goal setting (Kyllo & Landers, 1995) or self-talk interventions (Hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011).”
ResultSelf-talk: Review and sport-specific model.
Van Raalte, J. L., Vincent, A., & Brewer, B. W. (2016) · Psychology of Sport and Exercise · doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.08.004 · Cited by 179
“A metaanalysis of the instructional and motivational self-ta k and performance in sport literature provided support for the framework, demonstrating the effects of self-talk on performance and highlighting the importance of situational factors (Hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011).”
BackgroundInfluential
Metadata
- Authors
- Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Zourbanos, N., Galanis, E., & Theodorakis, Y.
- Affiliations
- University of Thessaly (GR)
- Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, University of Thessaly, Trikala, Greece
- Corresponding author
- Hatzigeorgiadis, Antonis
- Venue
- Perspectives on Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2011-07
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 348-356
- ISSN
- 1745-6916 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-6924
- OpenAlex
- W2057172229
- Cited by
- 361
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 47 · 2025: 39 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 34 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 35 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 27 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 13 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 2.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Perspectives on Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- University of Thessaly Institutional Repository (University of Thessaly) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Sport Psychology and Performance
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation › Sports and Physical Education Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Motivation and Self-Concept in Sports
- Keywords
- self-talk, athletic performance, instructional self-talk, motivational self-talk, motor skill learning, task novelty, moderators of intervention effectiveness
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