Arousal

Often the terms stress, anxiety and arousal are used interchangeably to explain how emotions and mental factors affect sports performance. This is often the case for someone without a sports science background. However, these terms are usually defined and described as different things by sports psychologists; despite this there is still some overlap.

Stress

Stress is the imbalance between the demands of a situation and the individual’s perceptions of their capability to meet the demands, when success is important. Stress can be both physical and psychological. Every situation places an individual under stress, for example as you read this page you may experience physical and psychological demands; however, you probably think that you are able to cope with the demands of this task so the level of stress is minimal. Yet, if you were rock climbing the demands would be more intense and some people may not perceive themselves as having the capability to cope, particularly those with a fear of heights, therefore they would experience higher levels of stress.

Stressor

Demands placed on an individual that instigate stress; examples in sport may include the pressure of taking an important penalty, the level of competition such as World Championships, and the audience. Another example is physical fatigue, as this can also be a stressor.

Anxiety and arousal are often referred to as consequences of stress. Arousal and anxiety are related to each other in terms of the performance situations (states) and the actual performer (trait)

Trait Anxiety is part of the athletes personality, it is innate and is manifested in a natural predisposition to perceive situations as threatening e.g. a footballer worrying about the condition of the pitch every match or an athlete worrying about getting injured every race.

State Anxiety is an immediate emotional state characterised by apprehension and tension. This temporary emotional state is in response to a situation e.g. a sprinter feeling tense at start of race or a rugby player about to take conversion which could decide match.

Somatic anxiety is the physiological response to anxiety these physiological symptoms include:

• increased heart rate
• increased sweating
• increased muscle tension
• nausea
• 'butterflies in the stomach'

Cognitive anxiety is psychological response to anxiety and these psychological symptoms include:

• mental feelings of worry
• doubt
• apprehension
• negative thinking
• nervousness

The effect arousal has on performance has been investigated by a number of different psychologists and it has led to the development of different models. Each of these models looks to explain the relationship between increasing levels of arousal and sports performance.

These theories tend to be used to explain over arousal and choking.

Choking is the inability to perform at an optimum level often seen as a sudden impairment or failure of sports performers due to over anxiety/over arousal/pressure this is linked to catastrophe theory

This is a simplistic model that suggests a positive linear relationship between arousal and performance. The more ‘psyched up’ an individual is the better they will perform. A key element of this model is the dominant response, which is the usual behaviour of the performer; this develops the drive theory to differentiate between levels of learning and the effects of arousal. The dominant response is intensified as arousal increases.

The dominant response is a response that is most likely to occur in a given situation.

For example if we were looking at the serve of a novice and an experienced tennis player, the dominant response for a performer in the cognitive phase of learning (beginner) which is poorly learnt with a number of flaws in comparison to the perfect technical model. At low levels of arousal the performer may concentrate on trying to improve the performance of the skill as they execute it, but as arousal increases, the dominant habit is used so more errors occur and performances suffer. The dominant response for a performer in the autonomous phase (experienced) would be a well leant, correct response, so when there are high levels of arousal, performance would be improved.

One of the main criticisms of Drive theory is that the relationship between arousal and performance is rarely linear. Drops and improvements occur with different levels of arousal. It does not explain how elite performers have bad games despite being highly aroused and for this reason a better model to explain this link could be the inverted U theory . This theory states that as the athlete’s arousal level increases so will their performance; this rise will continue to an ‘optimum point’ where performance will be at a very high level. However, if arousal continues to rise beyond this ‘optimal point’ performances will deteriorate. In this instance if a performer is too highly aroused to return to their best performance they must reduce their arousal optimum level.

Cognitive Stage: Requires low levels of arousal so the curve shifts left and is lower in height than the autonomous stage performer. This is due to an inability to attend to many cues, so they are unable to chunk information, the increased arousal causes a narrow attention band which means they will miss vital cues.

Autonomous Stage: Require high levels of arousal so the graph shifts further to the right and is higher than that of cognitive stage learner. This is becuase they can chunk information together and run whole motor programme as one piece of information this frees attention channels so the attention band needs high arousal in order to narrow and block out irrelevant cue

The previous anxiety models do not distinguish between the effects of somatic and cognitive anxiety. Catastrophe theory suggests that an athlete is affected differently by each type of anxiety and that performance does not simply drop off. Sometimes the performance can dramatically decline.

Catastrophe theory proposes that when an athlete is under conditions of low cognitive anxiety the relationship between performance and somatic anxiety would follow the inverted U theory. So, if an athlete is experiencing raised heart rate and butterflies in their stomach but is not worried about how they are playing, they would experience a rise in performance to an optimal point followed by a gradual drop off. Under conditions of high cognitive anxiety the relationship between somatic anxiety and performance would rise to the optimal level but any increase in somatic anxiety would result in a catastrophic decrease in performance. Once this has occurred it is difficult to return to the original levels of optimal performance.

The presence of others is an important factor when discussing arousal of the performer. It is generally accepted that the presence of an audience increases arousal and this in turn will affect performance. Zajonc (1965) proposed the term Social Facilitation to describe situations when the presence of an audience increases arousal and performance is improved. Social inhibition is used when describing how increasing arousal leads to decreases in performance. This is based on the principles of Drive theory and the dominant response occurring. When in front of an audience, players in the cognitive phase of learning will experience a rise in arousal and the dominant response would contain mistakes resulting in poor performance. Conversely, a performer in the autonomous phase would find this arousal improves performance with the dominant response of correct skills. However, inverted U theory can also be applied to this idea as different levels of arousal can facilitate performance if this takes the performer into their optimum arousal level.

In some sports the audience does not only include spectators but also people who make judgements on the individuals’ performance, these can be judges in sports such as ice-skating and gymnastics, scouts and selectors in sports like football, rugby and cricket. Sometimes an individual may feel that their parents or friends who are watching are making judgements on their performance and it increases anxiety; this perception is known as evaluation apprehension.

Evaluation apprehension is when a performer feels they are being evaluated in some context by a crowd member; this feeling of evaluation causes arousal levels to increase.

Evaluation apprehension is more likely to occur if:

• The judges are of high status like team selectors
• The perceived evaluator is of the opposite sex
• The performer has low self-efficacy
• The performer’s ability level is low
• The audience are openly and verbally critical
• The event is important and the result is critical
• The previous performance was poor
• External rewards are high

Strategies to Combat Social Inhibition and Stress Management Techniques

It is clearly important for a performer to manage levels of arousal so they can operate in their optimal zone or point. Strategies can be used to either increase or reduce arousal to the optimum level for best performance. Selective attention is a method of blocking out irrelevant cues such as crowd noise; it helps to avoid distractions and therefore prevents arousal from rising to high.

Although performers may experience both somatic and cognitive state anxiety in times of stress, often they are affected more by just one of these types of anxiety. For this reason, if a performer experiences somatic anxiety then sports psychologists will work with the performer on somatic methods of maintaining optimum levels of arousal. Similarly, those who experience more cognitive anxiety will be given cognitive methods for reducing arousal.

Mental rehearsal is a method that can either increase or decrease arousal to the desired level. Other terms that are related to this are imagery and visualisation. It can be used to improve concentration by mental selection of cues and escape distractions similar to selective attention. Visualising success can raise confidence levels and imagery of relaxing situations can lower arousal levels. Mental rehearsal can be used to manage emotions, for example simply imagining feeling good can lower arousal; also the situations can be rehearsed before entering into them, like picturing a large audience.

Somatic Strategies (Physiological)

Two main strategies to reduce anxiety are Progressive Muscular Relaxation (PMR) and Biofeedback. PMR involves progressively tensing and relaxing muscles combined with rhythmical breathing; relaxation is achieved by distinguishing the feelings of tension and relaxation. It can focus the mind on reducing somatic anxiety, but also serves as a distraction from negative thoughts so can also help reduce cognitive anxiety.

Biofeedback is the use of physiological measuring equipment such as heart rate monitors, galvanic skin response detectors and blood pressure monitors. By monitoring the changes in these recordings an individual is able to physically decrease or increase the levels. Once this technique is learned, when required, the performer would be able to lower these responses without equipment; an example being, before taking a penalty in football.