ABSTRACT
As a branch of psychology, the psychology of performance is pretty much what the title suggests: a domain within psychology that focuses on the way the mind works (or needs to work) to be able to perform at a high level when it counts time after time. The psychological strategies utilized to perform when it counts are similar across many performance-focused domains. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to introduce this domain by clarifying what performance and performance psychology are, and by outlining key psychological factors that underpin successful performance. In order to understand what the psychology of performance is, it is important to first re-clarify what we understand by psychology, and how the psychology of performance or 'performance psychology' exists as a subcomponent of the broader field of psychology.
