Twenty five years of research says how people feel is not what keeps them. A handful of things you cannot see on film are. Sport PSYENCE measures them. The AEP™ helps families pressure test a commitment before they sign. The PED™ helps programs see where they are losing players while they can still act. Pick your side.
Both rest on the four forces, Sacrifice, Fit, Links, and Promise Integrity, that 25+ years of research links to whether someone stays, performs, and gets what they came for. What changes is who is in the room.
You are making a decision that will shape an entire college career. The AEP™ helps your family pressure test it before you sign. It makes the athlete's real priorities clear, shows where parent and athlete line up or collide, and hands you the questions every coach, program, and agent has to answer first.
You own the roster. The PED™ is a self scout for retention. It shows you, by group, where the things that keep players are strong and where the door is open, then turns that into the moves your staff makes next.
Applied to athletics, PSYENCE® finds where the choices athletes, parents, coaches, and programs make drift from the outcomes everyone says they want, then works on the conditions that make staying, performing, and keeping promises far more likely.
One body of science. Two instruments. The AEP™ for the people in your house. The PED™ for the staff that owns the roster.
Mitchell, Lee, and Holtom (2001) established the first three across 250+ peer reviewed studies and 111,000+ participants. The fourth, Promise Integrity, is grounded in Rousseau's psychological contract research and added by Dr. Dannehl for the NIL era.
What the athlete puts on the line by committing — and what would become hardest to walk away from later. For a high schooler picking a program, it shows up as opportunity cost across every other offer. For a JUCO athlete transferring up, it shows up as the ground already built. Same question, different starting point.
Alignment between the athlete and the program, coach, team, scheme, and environment. Fit is what most assessments think they measure. They do not.
Teammate bonds, coaching relationships, advisors, community ties, family proximity. Coaching changes can destroy Links overnight.
Were the commitments made during recruiting delivered? Playing time, coaching style, NIL follow through, academic support. The newest of the four, added for an era when the deal is explicit and in dollars.
Here is exactly what is and is not in the room when you bring in Sport PSYENCE.
We do not negotiate NIL deals, place athletes, or represent anyone in a transaction.
We do not market athletes, manage exposure, or curate program lists.
The AEP™ does not pick a school. The PED™ does not score athletes. Both surface structural data the staff or family acts on.
Not Myers-Briggs. Not DISC. What they measure is whether people stay, grounded in 25+ years of research.
The family pays us on the AEP™. The program pays us on the PED™. No commissions. Ever.
The AEP™ and PED™ are decision tools, not clinical assessments. A clinical concern triggers a pause and a referral.
We have no financial interest in where any athlete commits, or in any roster decision. Our incentive is clarity. Full stop.
Dr. Dannehl's applied sport work began in 1997 as a co-author on the Coaches Psychology Handbook and Players Psychology Handbook for the St. Louis Rams, working alongside the team's performance coach. His master's capstone built the Performance Enhancement Profile (PEP) in collaboration with the St. Louis Blues sport psychologist, integrating the Profile of Mood States, the Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style, and an original assessment framework. He partnered with the Blues' performance coach to develop the 9 C's of a Champion, an assessment focused on the characteristics of elite athletes.
His doctoral research extended the science with a fourth force, Promise Integrity, built for an era of explicit, dollar driven recruiting promises. That work became the foundation for the PSYENCE® Embeddedness Diagnostic and the Athletic Embeddedness Profile™.
Co-author: The PSYENCE of Execution: What Golf Reveals About Performing Under Pressure (with Eli Dannehl, 2026) and The PSYENCE of Sales Leadership: From Lagging Leader to Wise Warrior (with William Ely, 2026).
More from Scott on LinkedIn →The AEP™ for parents and athletes navigating a commitment decision.
The PED™ for coaches, ADs, and senior staff managing roster retention.
Start a conversation. We listen, you talk, and we figure out together whether the situation in front of you needs the AEP™, the PED™, or neither.
