Skateboarding psychology

Cal State Fullerton researcher Mike Boyd is one of the first academic researchers in the country to study the psychology of skateboarding.

Boyd, a former football coach at Katella High School in Anaheim, was watching a group of skateboarders one day. One skater in particular caught his eye when he took a hard fall attempting a difficult trick. Determined to land it, the skater quickly shook off the fall kept at it.

At that instant the 53 year old became captivated by the skater mentality. A marginalized sport with very little public support, skating still manages to move forward, evolve and grow. There are now over 12 million skaters in the world.

Boyd noted a trend in skaters he called the “Iceberg Profile,” which means “high task orientation” lowers rates of depression, tension, fatigue, confusion and anger than the average person. In other worlds, the drive to achieve spikes and negative emotions become diminished, causing an spike in a graph (iceberg).

Boyds’ findings were published in March 2007 (with co-author Mi-Sook Kim) and conclude that skaters have the same mentality as world class athletes.

The most successful athletes also have “high task orientation,” which means they want to excel because of an internal need to see how well they can do, rather than a desire to compare themselves with others. What’s somewhat different is the drive of skaters, where in most sports the drive is to win and compete. “It’s a noncompetitive activity,” Boyd said. “It’s not who won or lost. Competition drives a lot of kids away from sports after the age of 12.”

“It might be to do with some kind of general perception that skateboarding is somehow still a children’s activity and therefore somehow not worthy of academic study,” Borden said. “Although, of course, I would argue that neither of these things are actually the case.”