Coleman Griffith

Coleman Roberts Griffith (May 22, 1893 – February 1966) was an American sport psychologist. Born in Iowa, he is considered the founder of American sport psychology. Griffith studied at Greenville College until 1915, and then studied psychology at the University of Illinois. While at the University of Illinois, Griffith established what he claimed to be the first sports psychology laboratory in the United States. At this time Griffith worked closely with the University of Illinois football team, studying how factors such as psychomotor skills and personality variables related to performance and learning of athletic skills. Due to financial reasons, the Research in Athletics Laboratory eventually was closed, which led to Griffith becoming a sport psychologist with the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Throughout his time with the Chicago Cubs, Griffith examined the players and completed a series of reports for Philip K. Wrigley, the owner of the Chicago Cubs team, with the results eventually summarized in a large report. His ideas were met with resistance, but he helped the Cubs to be successful while there. Griffith ended his career in the department of education at the University of Illinois until his retirement in 1961. Some of Griffith's main contributions to the field of sports psychology came from his publications The Psychology of Coaching (1926)^[1] and The Psychology of Athletics (1928).^[2] These publications were written during Griffith’s time at the University of Illinois and covered topics such as how a coach must have knowledge in athletics, physiology, and psychology to be successful. Much of Griffith's research and publications have become the foundation for the widely growing field of sports psychology and many of his ideas are still used today.

Early life and education

Born in 1893, in Guthrie Center, Iowa, Coleman Griffith was the first of four children. He completed his undergraduate degree at Greenville College in Illinois in 1915, where he met his future wife, Mary Louise Coleman.^[3] While at Greenville College, Coleman was very involved in athletics and various extracurricular activities. This consisted of being freshman class president, a member of male quartet, a member of the baseball and basketball teams, as well as organizing various gymnastics events.^[3] With his clear passion for leading and being involved in athletics, it is not surprising that Coleman would go on to expand his education and use his knowledge in the athletic realm. Coleman continued expanding his education, as he received his PhD in psychology in 1920 at the University of Illinois under the supervision of Madison Bentley.^[3] His dissertation focused on the vestibular system of the white rat.

Career

In 1922, he was then appointed to assistant professor, and made acting head of the University of Illinois psychology department during Bentley's sabbatical. He offered an introduction to psychology course with a focus on the interests of an athlete. This led him to offering a course titled "Psychology and Athletics" for the first time in 1923, eventually leading to his first published textbook of General Introduction to Psychology.^[4] In 1927, after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship, Coleman studied at the University of Berlin. Coleman was later named head of the Bureau of Institutional Research.^[3] This was an office that collated internal data for the University President, such as student-teacher ratios. He held this position until 1944 and was then named provost of the University of Illinois. He ended his position of provost in 1953, and in 1956 he was named head of the National Education Association's Office of Statistical Information. He retired from the department of education at Illinois in 1962 and worked for the Oregon State System of Higher Education thereafter.^[4]

Research

University of Illinois

Athletic Research Laboratory

In 1918 Griffith began informally investigating psychological factors related to basketball and football by observing the teams at the University of Illinois. He tested football players’ reaction times with a San-born reaction-timer in 1920. After seeing these studies, the Director of Athletics at the University, George Huff, helped convince the university to open an Athletic Research Laboratory. In 1925 Griffith was appointed director of the newly opened Athletic Research Laboratory. The lab had two rooms, one psychological lab and one physiological lab. It also had a workshop and a rat colony. In the lab Griffith investigated psychomotor skills, learning, personality, and how rotation affected equilibrium. To study these things, he developed tests to measure reaction time, muscular tension and relaxation, coordination, learning, and mental alertness. He also interviewed athletes and designed precise interview questions to learn more about these athletes' experiences during competition. The Athletic Research Laboratory was closed in 1932 due to a lack of financial support.^[5]

Professional sports team

Chicago Cubs

In 1937 the owner of the Chicago Cubs, Philip K. Wrigley, offered Griffith a position with the team. This offer included a budget for equipment, and a laboratory in Chicago. Wrigley believed that Griffith could help the team by giving them a psychological advantage.

Initially, Griffith was met with resistance from manager Charlie Grimm, who did not believe in psychologists and told the players not to listen to Griffith. Following spring training in 1938, Griffith made various suggestions such as making practice more like games, and having players approach practice with the same mentality with which they would approach a game. These suggestions were not implemented. Grimm was fired during the 1938 season and replaced by the catcher, Gabby Hartnett.

Hartnett led the Cubs to the World Series, but was not any more open to Griffith's ideas than Grimm had been. Griffith wrote a 183-page report for Wrigley concerning the 1938 season, in which he mentioned how he viewed Hartnett as incompetent. Hartnett was not fired.

Griffith worked part-time during 1939, but only wrote four short reports and continued dealing with distrust from management. Only one report was written for the team in 1940 before Griffith’s work with the team was stopped.^[6]

Major texts and publications

1. Psychology of Coaching (1926)

Some of Griffith’s main contributions to the field of sports psychology came from his publications The Psychology of Coaching (1926) and The Psychology of Athletics (1928). His first book, The Psychology of Coaching, was written with the main theme being that a coach must have the qualities of an athlete, physiologist, and psychologist. All chapters were written to be directly relevant to coaches. In this publication Griffith focuses on topics such as the importance of habit formation, and "Morale", which is what he described as an ideal psychological environment where athletes can adopt and grow personal and intellectual traits in relation to athletics. According to Griffith, Morale is the ultimate aim of athletic competition and results in successful "personality and willpower" ^[7] Griffith built on his writings in the field of sports psychology through the Psychology of Athletics (1928).

2. Psychology of Athletics (1928) and The Athletic Journal

Griffith built on his writings in the field of sports psychology through the Psychology of Athletics (1928) as well as many contributions to a journal called The Athletic Journal. Griffith wrote about the basic problems and psychological components of athletic performance such as skills, learning, habit, attention, vision, emotion, and reaction time. The Athletics Journal, was a periodical founded by John Griffith (no relation), was aimed towards writing psychology for coaches. Griffith's contribution to this journal was the foundation of the Psychology of Athletics. Griffith's Psychology of Coaching, Psychology of Athletics, and contributions to The Athletic Journal were written during his time researching at the University of Illinois.^[8]

Later life

Griffith's professional work in athletics came to an end after the Cubs' season in 1940. Four years later, he became the provost of the University of Illinois; however, this position ended over a conflict with Illinois' professor of physiology, Andrew Ivy. The disagreement stemmed from Ivy's claim to have discovered a cure for cancer called "krebiozen". This conflict caused Griffith to resign by force, although he continued to work in the Department of Education until 1961. After retiring from this position Griffith moved and took a new position in the Oregon State System of Higher Education until he died in 1966.

Bibliography

• 1922: An historical survey of vestibular equilibration, University of Illinois Press
• 1923: General introduction to psychology, MacMillan
• 1926: Psychology of Coaching, Scribner's
• 1928: Psychology and Athletics, Scribner's
• 1928: General Introduction to Psychology (revised edition), MacMillan
• 1934: An Introduction to Applied Psychology, MacMillan
• 1935: Introducition to Educational Psychology, Farrar & Rinehart
• 1939: Psychology Applied to Teaching and Learning, Farrar & Rinehart
• 1943: Principles of Systematic Psychology, University of Illinois Press

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References