The world of both sport and golf was to sit up in wonder on the return of Tiger Woods to play in the 2022 Masters Championship.
Expectation was high, for Woods was a Masters favourite with five wins and is widely regarded as one of the greatest golfers of the modern era and a global sporting hero.
Woods was making a return to top level competition some 15 months after recovering from a car accident in which he was lucky not to have had lost a leg so severe were the injuries.
Nonetheless, Woods, like his supporters, came into the tournament with high expectations.
Expectations are an extremely important motivator and from a psychological perspective an expectation ‘is a strong belief that something positive will happen’.
Educators have understood for some years the importance of teachers having high expectations of their students, for this positive belief when internalised by their students can lead to improved performance. Conversely, low teacher expectations can lead to low performance[1].
Not surprisingly the self-fulfilling prophecy of high expectation, better known as the Pygmalion Effect, has crossed from the field of education into both sports and organisational psychology primarily through the growth of coaching.
However, merely internalising the high expectations of others and believing something good will happen is nothing more than ‘magical thinking’.
Sixty years before the research that led to Pygmalion Effect, the child development psychologist Jean Piaget considered that ‘magical thinking’ was a feature of childhood thinking that children grew out of around the age of seven years[2]. This has turned out to be wrong, for we now know that normal adults continue to engage in various forms of ‘magical thinking’ throughout their lives.
Woods through his father, Earl Woods, had been instilled with a strong set of values and beliefs from a very early age one of which was unwavering self-belief that was the bedrock of his success.
Self-belief and high expectation do not necessarily lead to success, for as we saw Woods’ performance at the Masters started well but faded as the 4 days unfolded with him slipping down the field despite his making the half-way cut. The determination to succeed, however, showed on his face and his strategy on the course was far more conservative than at any time and was faultless. Nonetheless, he and his supporters expectations were not fulfilled.
Woods possibly could have learned from two other champions, this time from the world of tennis, who similarly to him decided that in 2021 they could return to the Wimbledon Championships following injury and compete at the top level. Andy Murray and Roger Federer, respectively two-time and eight-time Wimbledon champions, turned up with strong beliefs of going deep into the tournament, Federer even thinking he could win and extend his record.
The reality was very different, for both departed after playing tennis well below the level they and their followers expected. For Federer his exit was a truly humbling experience with him losing the final set of his match to love; his worst performance ever in a Wimbledon match.
Expectations for all three former champions collided with reality – the difference between what they thought could happen with what actually happened. Was it realistic for them to continue to hold such high expectations?
Based upon their past abilities it might be reasonable to have believed this but they need to now carefully consider reality. In professional sport factors such as age and physical ability would need to factored in: they have to accept that what the mind thinks and says and what the body can actually physically do are two very different things.
Accepting that they may not be able to rise again to such high expectations might not be easy for these past champions to accept but there is here a key lesson for us all: we should only expect to achieve at a level that is realistic to our current skills and abilities.
The lure of high expectations through ‘magical thinking’ more often than not leads to disappointment, failure, low self-esteem, and even depression, for too often what we are expectant of achieving, and what others may expect of us, goes beyond what is realistic.
As individuals we need to be aware of our capabilities and skills through getting regular feedback through which we can set realistic goals to learn and develop that will increase our capacity to realistically meet higher expectations.
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