ABSTRACT
Post-positivist perspectives on self-identity have been predominant within sport psychology and thus fruitful for learning more about sport experiences, performance, and participation. A more extensive discussion of social identity theory in sport by T. Rees et al. explored sport groups as elements that are incorporated into a person’s sense of self and, in turn, become determinants of sport-related behavior. Discursive psychological approaches thus fall under the social constructionism umbrella because self-identity is theorized as the product of individual, social, and cultural discourses that interact to create particular meanings and associated actions related to identities. Social psychologist Charles Cooley further conceptualized self and identity as a social phenomenon that is shaped and reflected back to us through interpersonal interactions. Additional work in the 1990s was quantitatively studied using a ‘multidimensional’ social cognitive conception of self-identity, which was formed and/or expressed within, and across, sport contexts.
