Sport Psychology as an instance of Ecological Psychology

While the vast majority of publications in sport psychology look inward, in this paper we look outward to examine the relationship of the athlete to her environment. We describe the theoretical foundations and methodological implications of Egon Brunswik's "probabilistic functionalism" and contrast that with the dominant theory and method of psychological research, namely the "rule of one variable". We explain the importance of Brunswik's concept of "representative design" if sport psychologists want to generalize their results from their studies to the competitive environment. We then use examples from the sport of tennis to show how probabilistic functionalism and representative design can he used in studying and training athletes.