Sport psychology
The next developments came from Norman Tripplett. Norman Tripplett worked at the University of Indiana as a psychologist. He conducted an experiment that focused on competition. This experiment started to connect sports and psychology. His experiment also began to combine them into one field. In 1897, Tripplett started his study. He focused on how the performance of one person is influenced by other people being around. In 1898, he wrote about his results in his article, “The Dynamogenic Factors Involved in Pace-making and Competition”. His beliefs and findings were that cyclists were more likely to cycle faster when in the presence of a pacemaker or a competitor. People were more likely to cycle faster because the presence of another person caused them to put in more effort and use energy that they were not before. In 1898, Tripplett tried to confirm his predictions and beliefs he came up with during the cycling study by running an experiment in laboratory. This experiment consisted of people winding fishing line as fast as they could in order to move a flag around a course. The results of this experiment confirmed the results and predictions that were found in the cycling study.