Mental toughness

Mental toughness is a measure of individual resilience and confidence that may predict success in sport, education and the workplace. As a broad concept, it emerged in the context of sports training, in the context of a set of attributes that allow a person to become a better athlete and able to cope difficult training and difficult competitive situations and emerge without losing confidence. In recent decades, the term has been commonly used by coaches, sport psychologists, sports commentators, and business leaders.

"Mental toughness" is frequently used colloquially to refer to any set of positive attributes that helps a person to cope with difficult situations. Coaches and sport commentators freely use the term mental toughness to describe the mental state of athletes who persevere through difficult sport circumstances to succeed. For example, it is often simply applied as a default explanation for any victory, which is highly problematic as an attribution. Criticisms about the use of this imprecise approach abound (for example, Moran (2012)).

However, within the past fifteen years, scientific research has attempted a formal definition of mental toughness as a psychological construct with clear measurement criteria, allowing robust analyses and comparisons to be made.

In particular, three research teams have produced both a definition and a construct definition for mental toughness:

Graham Jones, Sheldon Hanton, and Declan Connaughton of the United States used personal construct psychology in interviews with elite athletes, as well as elite-level coaches and sport psychologists, to arrive at the following definition of mental toughness:

These same researchers published a second paper in 2007, which provided four dimensions (categories) for mental toughness attributes. One general dimension was outlined: a performer's attitude or mindset (specifically, the performer's focus and self-belief). Three time-specific dimensions were outlined: training, competition, and post-competition. These time-specific dimensions contain attributes of mental toughness (such as handling pressure, handling failure and pushing yourself to your physical limit in training) that pertain to their use at these times.

Peter Clough et al. (2002) proposed a model of mental toughness, conceptualising it more like a personality trait. Their model has four components: confidence; challenge; control and commitment. In initially conceptualising mental toughness and developing the MTQ48 questionnaire measurement tool, the approach taken by Clough et al. (2002) was to combine existing psychological theory and applied sport psychology in an attempt to bridge the gap between research and practice. Clough et al. saw clear comparisons between their emerging mental toughness data and the concept of hardiness, a key individual difference and resistance resource that helps buffer stress and has become an accepted concept in health psychology within the study of the stress-illness relationship. Clough et al. are clear that mental toughness is concept with broad application and should not be limited to the sports domain. They feel that sports specific measures are unlikely to move the field forward in any meaningful ways. The development work relating to their model is fully described and discussed in their book on mental toughness.

...
Wikipedia