International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology

ISSN: 1612-197X (Print) 1557-251X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rijs20

Sport psychology in emerging countries, special

section 2: Introduction

Athanasios G. Papaioannou, Robert J. Schinke & Thomas Schack

To cite this article: Athanasios G. Papaioannou, Robert J. Schinke & Thomas Schack (2019)
Sport psychology in emerging countries, special section 2: Introduction, International Journal of
Sport and Exercise Psychology, 17:1, 1-4, DOI: 10.1080/1612197X.2019.1575071

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1612197X.2019.1575071

Published online: 22 Feb 2019.

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International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 2019
Vol. 17, No. 1, 1–4, https://doi.org/10.1080/1612197X.2019.1575071

Sport psychology in emerging countries, special section 2: Introduction

Athanasios G. Papaioannoua*, Robert J. Schinkeb and Thomas Schackc
a
Department of Physical Education & Sport Sciences, University of Thessaly, Trikala, Greece; bSchool of
Human Kinetics, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Canada; cFaculty of Psychology and Sport Sciences,
University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

This is the 2nd special issue section focused on sport and exercise psychology research and
practice in countries referred to as “emerging” in sport and exercise psychology. Promotion
of sport psychology research and practice in emerging countries is an important aim in this
journal and of the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP). This special issue is
one among several actions adopted by the ISSP to promote sport psychology in emerging
countries. Six articles are reported here from China, Ghana, Argentina and Brazil. Some of
them focus on sport psychology practice while others cover different areas of sport and
exercise psychology research. These contributions extend beyond building capacity in these
regions to an equal mandate: revealing diverse sport psychology practices from the global
sport psychology community.
Keywords: Emerging; sport psychology; cultural; society; international; journal

When we decided to develop the Special Issue (SI) “Sport Psychology in Emerging Countries”
(Schinke, Papaioannou, & Schack, 2016) we did not expect authors’ enthusiasm, as reflected in
an exceedingly large number of manuscript submissions. Each submission underwent the
typical review process, whereby some were accepted and some rejected. Still the number of
total accepted articles was too large for a single SI. Consequently, the co-editors decided to
provide two successive Special Sections with the same SI focus. In this 2nd instalment, most of
the articles were accepted two years ago, and until now, they were found in the “latest article”
section of the website of the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology (IJSEP).
The definition of “emerging countries” and the scientific and editorial reasons that led us to
develop this SI appear in the introduction of Part One (Schinke et al., 2016). Adding to the pre-
vious justification, readers of the IJSEP should understand that the emphasis of this journal is to
promote sport and exercise psychology through diverse perspectives from across the world;
which is also the main aim of the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP), this journal’s
sponsor. To accomplish this aim we decided to encourage scholars from emerging countries to
publish their sport psychology research in this journal through an open call. We anticipate that
this strategy will boost their research and maybe their status as emerging scholars, internationally.
Beyond this SI, we plan to initiate further actions to promote SEP in emerging countries. Since
the publication of Section 1 in 2016, we also created a position for a new Section Editor focused
on SEP in emerging countries. The new Section Editor is Professor Natalia Stambulova from
Halmstad University, Sweden. Dr Stambulova combines extensive editorial experience in
several of our field’s leading journals with international experiences in SEP research and practice,

*Corresponding author. Email: athanasios.g.papaioannou@gmail.com

© 2019 International Society of Sport Psychology

2 A.G. Papaioannou et al.

where she has supported a diversity of young and established international scholars. Authors from
emerging countries contact Dr Stambulova for advice regarding the publication of their research.
These actions are part of a wider ISSP Mission to promote sport and exercise psychology in
emerging countries. Layered into this broad-based mission, the ISSP Managing Council often
organises its annual meetings in emerging countries to support local hosts in the organisation
of national and / or regional conferences. Globally, in 2009, the World Congress of Sport Psychol-
ogy took place in Marrakesh, Morocco, attracting more than one thousand sport psychologists
from all over the world to an emerging country. More recently, the ISSP has also initiated an
Ambassador’s Programme, where national sport psychology societies apply for an expert in
research or practice to travel and deliver workshops at their annual event. Recently in November
2018, one ISSP representative, ISSP Vice President Dr Tatiana Ryba was in attendance at the
launch of the Ghana Society of Sport Psychology and delivered educational presentations.
The policies of the IJSEP and the ISSP promote intercultural understanding and peace.
However, since the publication of Section One of this SI, new political developments have tran-
spired, creating an impression that the world is becoming more conservative towards intercultural
exchanges, while the hope for global peace might appear to be fading. The IJSEP is not a journal
in the position to analyse politico-economic issues. However, it is a high-quality peer-review
outlet that promotes understanding about how people from different cultures think, feel and
behave in sport and exercise contexts. Beyond cultural differences, the content of this journal,
such as the following article by Ge et al. (2019), illustrates that basic human needs, such as
the need for autonomy, are universal and their satisfaction should be accomplished if we want
to promote human flourishing and human good in our global village (Ryan & Deci, 2017).
This information should be transmitted not only to sport psychologists but also to coaches and
athletes. We must educate and enable athletes to act as role models and messengers of cultural
understanding and peace.

The contributions
The current Section starts with an article stemming from the research tradition of cultural sport
psychology (e.g. Ryba & Schinke, 2009). Ge et al. (2019) present some of the current challenges
of Chinese Olympic athletes within the Chinese Whole-Nation system and the implications for
Chinese sport psychologists. Unlike Western and other capitalist societies, the Chinese govern-
ment has sole responsibility for sport, including regulation of all sport administration and
payment of all salaries from athletes and coaches to sport scientists and administrators. This
system provides the resources to Chinese athletes to devote themselves entirely to their sport
training. On the other hand, the Chinese Whole national System’s medal orientation puts substan-
tial psychological pressure on athletes to perform, while the increased demands restrict athletes’
opportunities for proper formal education and development of skills to survive after sport retire-
ment. While Chinese sport psychologists are experienced in the provision of culture-specific
relaxation and self-control techniques to help athletes cope with pressure, career transition ser-
vices is an emerging topic for Chinese sport psychologists, much like in other countries. Although
both of these challenges can be found in competitive sport across most countries, the authors of
this article unveil some interesting culture-related aspects of Chinese sport that differentiate the
work of Chinese sport psychologists from the work of their colleagues in other countries. An
example is the high level of control of coaches on athletes, which is not found in several contem-
porary Western societies. Still, according to self-determination theory and research (Ryan & Deci
2017), the need for autonomy is universal and Chinese athletes also need autonomy-supportive
environments to flourish. As Chinese athletes are moving towards elite sport the power struggle
intensifies between athletes and coaches in terms of who has control in decision-making. Chinese
 International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology 3

sport psychologists are faced with the herculean task to change the mindset of millions of Chinese
coaches, many of them perceiving their athletes’ quests for autonomy as rebellion and indication
of laziness.
Hagan and Schack (2019) focused on sport psychology practice in Western sub-Saharan
Africa. Their arguments concur with claims that several research findings in Western, Educated,
Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010)
might have little relevance to African sport psychologists, who serve athletes believing in witch-
craft. Many Western sub-Saharan athletes adopt Pre-Game Rituals (PGRs) called juju, which are
spiritual practices unknown to WEIRD societies. Hagan and Schack (2019) suggest that these
PGRs might act as a psychological placebo affecting athletic performance. Then, they identify
some PGRs that might be used as Pre-Performance Routines (PPR) without compromising ath-
letes’ health and well-being. Research is needed to verify their claims, and their contribution is
intended as a catalyst.
South America is a large continent with little presence in English-speaking journals of sport
psychology (Papaioannou, Machaira, & Theano, 2013). Hence, we are pleased to include in this
issue four articles from this continent. The article from Raimundi, Molina, Schmidt and Hernan-
dez-Mendo (2019) comes from Argentina. It focused on family functioning and its association
with athletes’ character strengths, an issue that is under examined in sport psychology literature.
As was expected, in families with positive functioning athletes scored higher on character
strengths such as perseverance, hope, zest, teamwork and kindness than in families with negative
functioning. Moreover, elite-level athletes scored higher on perseverance and teamwork than rec-
reational athletes. Interestingly, these authors found that elite athletes were more likely to perceive
positive family functioning than recreational athletes. These findings call for further studies inves-
tigating the causal relationship of these variables and the deeper investigation of third variables,
such as social class/family wealth, that might affect some of the aforementioned associations.
The remaining three articles are from sport psychologists in Brazil. Parma, Costa, Andrade,
Cavalcante, Hackfort, and Noce (2019) focused on decision-making and personality of wheel-
chair athletes, revealing that worse decision-making scores corresponded positively to irrespon-
sibility, psychoticism and anxiety. Machado et al. (2019) adapted the serve-specific core self-
evaluations scale in Portuguese and their findings provide preliminary support to the construct
validity of this scale. Fortes et al. (2019) investigated the effects of body weight reduction
methods on symptoms of stress and psychophysiological recovery of judokas who reduced
10% of their weight within a 2-week period. Their findings imply that these rapid body weight
reduction methods increased the magnitude of stress symptoms and decreased perceptions of psy-
chophysiological recovery in judokas.
These contributions provide the readers the unique challenges for practitioners and the
context-specific characteristics of sport psychology practices in specific places in the world, as
well as the expansion of well-developed theories and methods to countries that do not perfectly
identify themselves with the WEIRD acronym. We are grateful to all authors of this SI and we
wish all of them to become witnesses of a big boost in sport and exercise psychology in their
locations in the near future.

References
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Ge, Y., Schinke, R., Dong, D., Lu, C., Si, G., & Oghene, O. (2019). Working with Chinese Olympic athletes
in their national sport system: From the conceptual to a proposed research–practice integration.
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