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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.
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Anxiety & Arousal in Sport
Sport psychology
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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?
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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.”
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Causes of anxiety Perceived importance of the situation
Negative attributional style Perfectionism Fear of failure Competition-specific stress
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Yerkes-Dodson Curve
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How exactly does this explain performance?
Well, that’s the trick…it’s difficult to study specifically. However, the attempts are being made.
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