Psychological foundations of olympic wrestling excellence: Reconciling individual differences and nomothetic characterization

Abstract

This manusuipt presents a portion of a larger study fuaded by a grant From USA

This manuscript is one in a series presenting results of an in-depth investigation of the 1988 US Olympic Wrestling team regarding psychological factors influencing performance in the Seoul Olympics. Previous reports have shown clear nomothetic differences between medal and nonmedal winning wrestlers (Gould, Eklund, & Jackson, 1992a, 1992b, 1992c). This particular article focuses on identifying individual differences among the six medal winning wrestlers. Results revealed that clear and important individual differences existed in the medalists' Perceptions of expectations placed upon them and the content and complexity of their preperformancc mental preparation strategies. These findines show that focusing on nomothetic consistency and aggregathg over subjects to remove individual “error” or foCusing only on individual Werences and ignoring nomothetic consistency is not as useful as Silverstein's (1988) “Aristotelian Resolution” which encourages the researcher to identify general principles across subject groups whik retaining the ability to date idiosyncratic uniqueness rather than merely relegating it to error.