Einleitung

Predicted and consistent excellency based on self-regulation of optimal states prior to, during and after performance is one of the crucial psychological factors in competitive (elite) sports. Thus theory-based diagnostic, prediction, monitoring, and interventions are the key factors enhancing individual (and team) performance. Historically, however, most scales used to assess, for instance, pre-competition anxiety, were initially borrowed from non-sport settings (educational, clinical, organizational). Concerns about the lack of sports-specific scales have been expressed in sport psychology and early attempts to develop such instruments focused mainly on their psychometric characteristics. Recently, more emphasis on individual-oriented and multidimensional procedures was advocated. Individual-oriented focus in the assessment of performance-related states seems particularly relevant to overcome nomothetic orientations and a negative bias predominant in the main stream and sport psychology during the last decades. This presentation will focus on conceptual, methodological, and applied issues related to in sport-specific individualized profiling of situational emotions and motivations. Emotion-motivational profiling is based on the individual zones of optimal functioning (IZOF) model as a framework for the systematic description, prediction, and monitoring of task-related subjective experiences affecting an athlete's ability to perform consistently up to her or his potential. The method, initially tested empirically in the assessment of precompetition anxiety and positive and negative emotions, is now extended to situational motivations as another important component of performance-related psychobiosocial states. Einleitung