Series Editor’S Preface: Bringing Cultural Psychology to the Domain of Sports: Practical Innovation of Theoretical Importance

This volume opens a new door for cultural psychology—into the domain of human efforts at maximum performance with deep motivation and risktaking. At the first glance it seems that cultural psychology here becomes applied—like is the case with “classically” applied topics of psychology such as the study of streetcar drivers, airline pilots in the landing of planes, or salespersons servicing the confused but sometimes eager buyers. Yet this is not the case here. In the case of sports-cultural psychology encounters persons who differ from most other research participants and application targets of psychology. While in regular psychology the assumption is that the phenomena exist by “natural order” approximated by the Gaussian Curve of normal distribution, in sports this does not apply. Instead, here the active persons are striving for the maximum—unique—performances never seen before. It is a domain of maximum mastery.