What is Sport Psychology? 2 main objectives: To understand how psychological factors affect in individual’s performance To understand how participation in sport and exercise affects one’s psychological development, health, and well-being.

Anxiety & Arousal in Sport Sport psychology

Setting some definitions Most athletes would tell you that the ability to cope with stress is important if you want to succeed. Some athletes seem to thrive on stress - and others are devastated by it. How do arousal and anxiety affect an athlete?

What is anxiety? Anxiety at the cognitive level involves worry and negative appraisal of one’s performance and future performance; At the biological level, it involves rapid heart beat, increased perspiration, shortness of breath and other symptoms. Anxiety often leads to tension between team- mates, agitation and restlessness. It may also lead to “choking.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMVqO6Npqhs

Causes of anxiety Perceived importance of the situation Negative attributional style Perfectionism Fear of failure Competition-specific stress

What is arousal? Arousal is a form of undifferentiated energy or alertness which ranges on a continuum from low (sleep) to high (intense agitation). Whereas arousal is undifferentiated, anxiety is an emotional negative appraisal of the arousal experience.

Role of arousal Research suggests that arousal can have either a debilitative or a facilitative effect on performance depending on how it is perceived by the athelete (Jones & Swain, 1992) What follows are some theories regarding the nature of the relationship between arousal and anxiety.

Drive Theory The simplest of the theories. Hull (1943) postulated that increased arousal led to increased performance. In other words there is a direct correlation between arousal and performance. Evaluation: It is overly simplistic. The theory is unable to explain why, for example, golfers may “choke” in high pressure tournaments.

Inverted U Hypothesis Also known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law (1908) suggests that increased arousal can improve performance up to a certain point, at which further arousal can impair performance. Evaluation: Arousal is difficult to measure objectively. In addition, there does not seem to be a specific point which consistently results in lower performance.

Yerkes-Dodson Curve

How exactly does this explain performance? Well, that’s the trick…it’s difficult to study specifically. However, the attempts are being made. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG7v4y_xwzQ