Ono Scholar Says Mind Games Increasing in Sports
Ono Academic College Senior Lecturer, Dr. Assaf Lev was recently interviewed by the “Naked Scientist” publication on the subject of sports psychology. He noted that as on-court violence decreases in sports, psychological tactics have risen to “psyche-out” opponents.
Assaf Lev, is a former professional basketball player and now and academic. In the mid-1990’s Lev played shooting guard for Israel’s Ironi Ramat Gan team. Today he is a Sport and Exercise Anthropologist, Senior Lecturer and Head of Research at the Department of Sports Therapy at Ono.
Lev concluded that while the discourse is one:
“[C]ondemning the physical violence, but the symbolic violence, we are encouraging more in the crowd and sometimes on TV, and so on. We do not perceive symbolic violence as something degrading, as something insulting. Every year we see the consequences. It’s not only on court, but you can see how it has shifted also on the every day or in the neighborhood or something. Back in the day, it wasn’t a big deal, basically, it was nothing. But these days we can see that people are going to laugh at you, people are going to insult you. I think it’s a serious matter. And that can cause real psychological harm.”
