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Motivation and Arousal Regulation in Sports Psychology

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Motivation

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Arousal Regulation

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Mind of the Athlete - Intrinsic Motivation

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The motivational dynamics of sport The 34th President of the US, Dwight D Eisenhower, once said that 'motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it'. And as Dr Costas Karageorghis explains, recent re...

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The best way to understand motivation is to consider both the person and the situation and how the two interact

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Motivations change over time, you should continue to monitor people's motives for participation even months after they've begun

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You influence motivation directly and indirectly

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Motivation is the direction and intensity of effort, especially as they relate to the direction and intensity of one's effort across time

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Regardless of what kind of day you are having, a positive attitude goes a long way toward increasing motivation

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Optimal Arousal Theory by Yerkes and Dorson (1908)

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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology

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The strategies for promoting a challenge state broadly fit within two themes. The first theme reflects strategies that can be adopted by coaches to create an environment in which a challenge state is more likely. The second theme reflect psychological skills that can be learned by athletes to get themselves into a challenge state.

Creating a Challenge Environment

More recent research (Turner, Jones, Sheffield, Barker, & Coffee, 2014) confirmed that challenge instructions only increased the perceptions of resource appraisals from the TCTSA, and threat instructions only decreased the perceptions of resource appraisals, keeping task demands the same between conditions. In other words, challenge instructions promoted high self-efficacy, high perceived control, and a focus on approach goals; threat instructions promoted low self-efficacy, low perceived control, and a focus on avoidance goals. Both sets of instructions increased perceptions of danger, uncertainty, and effort, thus maintaining perceived demands and only altering perceived resources. In two laboratory studies, a throwing across task and a climbing well task, Turner et al. ( 2014) found that challenge instructions led to challenge CV reactivity, whereas threat instructions led to threat CV reactivity.

The research suggesting that a challenge state can be promoted using instructional sets has important implications for how leaders manage individual and team approaches to stressors. Leaders can have an important influence on their subordinates' responses to stressful situations (e.g., Smith, Smoll, & Weichman, 1998; Baker, Côté, & Hawes, 2000), and therefore they could use this influence to promote a challenge state. Leaders can ensure that their communications with subordinates prior to stressful situations include primers for high confidence, control, and approach goals, while retaining references to the gravity and importance of the occasion. The use of particular instructional sets can also form part of the social support offered by the leader and others within a team setting.

A significant body of research indicates that social support provides a buffer for the adverse effects of stress (e.g., Cohen & McKay, 1984; Haslam, O'Brien, Jetten, Vormedal, & Penna, 2005). Cobb ( 1976) suggests that psychological support reflects the provision of information (e.g., effective coping response) and therefore it is important to provide the right information to those entering stressful situations. Social support can buffer stress in many different ways, but for the purposes of this article, one important mechanism is through informational support (House, 1981). Informational support provides those in receipt with coping guidance, similar to challenge instructions, and contributes to positive appraisal by helping those in receipt clarify their understanding of threatening stimuli (e.g., Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997). Informational social support can be used to help convince an individual that they can cope with the stressor (Cohen & McKay, 1984). Therefore, information offered to individuals that promotes high perceived resources, such as the instructions used in past research (e.g., Tomaka et al., 1997; Turner et al., 2014), may help those who receive them to enter a challenge state. In addition, Rees and Hardy ( 2004) found that social support positively influences performance, regardless of the level of stress, and more recently, Freeman and Rees ( 2008) found that high levels of esteem support predicted smaller threat appraisals and greater challenge appraisals, with subsequent better golf performance. The role of social support in challenge and threat states is yet to be fully tested, and some research has found that social support has little effect on challenge and threat states (Moore, Vine, Wilson, & Freeman, 2014). However, some suggest that social support could help enhance the resource appraisals, or could actually be a resource appraisal itself (e.g., Haslam & Reicher, 2006). Coaches may play an important role in social support, and a recent study (Nichols, Levy, Jones, Meir, Radcliffe, & Perry, 2016) of athletes' perceptions of coach behaviors found a positive association between supportive coach behaviors and challenge and unsupportive coach behaviors and threat. This finding illustrates that coaches can influence the self-reported challenge and threat states of athletes. Interestingly, in a study of soccer coaches coaching behaviors (Dixon, Turner, & Gillman, 2016) found positive associations between challenge appraisals and social support and between threat appraisals and autocratic behavior as well as a significantly negative association between threat appraisals and positive feedback. Therefore, the ways coaches appraise stressors are also important for how they behave towards their athletes.

Part of creating a challenge environment may also involve helping individuals to adapt to stressful situations via experiential learning, which places individuals in demanding situations. Past performance accomplishments are a powerful source of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Feltz & Lirgg, 2001), and, as is recognized in MAT and catastrophe theory, self-efficacy plays an important role in the relationship between arousal and performance. Self-efficacy is also an important resource appraisal in the TCTSA. Therefore, helping athletes to flourish in stressful situations may provide important sources of self-efficacy for subsequence stressors. One way to achieve this experiential learning is through systematic desensitization (Wolpe, 1973). In brief, the athlete is subjected to stress regularly and systematically, thus promoting acclimatization to future stressors. This exposure to stress may foster resilience, a construct that has been put forth in relation to challenge and threat states by Seery ( 2011). For Seery, the exhibition of a challenge state and potential positive (or less negative) outcomes, is suggestive of resilience in motivated situations, and individuals who have a history of facing some adversity should exhibit greater resilience than those who have experienced no or high adversity. Past research offers some evidence for Seery's notion of resilience, where repeated exposure to stressors has been shown to lead to an increase in challenge over time (Quigley, Barrett, & Weinstein, 2002). In other words, situations that become more familiar may promote a challenge appraisal and challenge CV responses due to enhanced coping perceptions (Blascovich et al., 1999; Quigley et al., 2002). Also in support of his assertions, Seery, Leo, Lupien, Kondrak, and Almonte ( 2013) found that relative to a history of either no adversity or nonextreme high adversity, a moderate number of adverse life events is associated with less negative responses to pain and more positive psychophysiological responses while taking a test. The precise impact of exposure on the demand and resource appraisals is not yet known, and future research should investigate exposure in line with the TCTSA.

Psychological Skills: Imagery, Reappraisal, Relaxation

Psychological skills are techniques that can be applied by individuals to regulate their own internal states such as cognitions and emotions. Two main psychological skills have emerged in literature that can promote a challenge state: reappraisal and imagery.

Another way to promote a challenge state is through the use of imagery, a technique that involves realistically recreating or creating events in the absence of physical practice. Imagery can be used for a variety of purposes, but notably, it is effective for regulating emotions (e.g., Hecker & Kaczor, 1988), enhancing self-confidence (Callow, Hardy, & Hall, 2001), and promoting coping under stress (e.g., Vadocz, Hall, & Moritz, 1997; for reviews, see Martin, Moritz, & Hall, 1999; Cumming & Ramsey, 2008), all of which are important aspects of a challenge state. The mechanisms for how imagery works are still under debate, but nonetheless, imagery is a well-researched skill that has been shown to be valuable for motivated performance situations (Durand, Hall, & Haslam, 1997). Three studies have expressly applied imagery to enhance a challenge state (Hale & Whitehouse, 1998; Williams, Cumming, & Balanos, 2010; Williams & Cumming, 2012). Hale and Whitehouse ( 1998) showed that an imagery-based video and audiotaped manipulation that prompted challenge perceptions resulted in less cognitive anxiety, less somatic anxiety, more self-confidence, and perceptions that symptoms were facilitative. In Williams et al. ( 2010) a challenge imagery script that emphasized resources (challenge appraisals), promoted high self-efficacy, high perceived control, and potential gain led to lower threat appraisals, positive emotion perceptions, and higher confidence. Similar scripts were used by Williams and Cumming ( 2012) who also found that the challenge script led to challenge appraisals and the threat script led to threat appraisal and a perception that emotional responses were debilitating for performance. Imagery offers a useful way to promote a challenge state, but more research is needed to test the psychophysiological implications of effective imagery use.

Although to date no studies have explicitly explored the effect of relaxation strategies on challenge and threat states, the use of relaxation techniques may be helpful in regulating arousal and may have the potential to reduce the intensity of the felt threat state and potentially its impact on performance, whereas energizing strategies may help enhance the felt experience of a challenge state. This is because increasing or decreasing physiological arousal would appear to have a blanket effect on the intensity of an individual's emotional state (e.g., Hohmann, 1966; Zillmann, Katcher, & Milavsky, 1972).

Relaxation techniques have been classified as muscle-to-mind techniques, which are more physical in nature (e.g., breathing techniques), or mind-to-muscle techniques (imaging being in a relaxing environment), which are more cognitive in nature (Harris, 1986). However, the autonomic nervous system and cognitive aspects of emotion are linked, illustrated in the fact that an intervention designed to reduce somatic (physical) anxiety also reduced, albeit to a lesser degree, cognitive anxiety in soccer players (Maynard, Hemmings, & Warwick-Evans, 1995) and field hockey players (Maynard & Cotton, 1993). A number of strategies have been proposed to reduce arousal (e.g., progressive muscular relaxation, centering), whereas strategies to increase arousal include up-beat music and exercise itself (Jones, 2003).

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Sport and stress are intertwined. Muhammad Ali once said, "I always felt pressure before a big fight, because what was happening was real." As this quote attests, sport is real, unscripted, with the potential for psychological, and often physical, harm. The response to stress, commonly described as "flight or fight," is an evolutionary adaptation to dangerous situations.

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Increase awareness of psychological state before controlling your thoughts and feelings. How we cope with anxiety is more important than how much of it we have.

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Anxiety reduction techniques

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Progressive Relaxation

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Breath Control

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Biofeedback

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Relaxation response teaches you to quiet the mind, concentrate, and reduce muscle tension

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To take steps to increase or decrease your arousal level, become aware of how activated or aroused you feel

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Increased breathing rate

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Act energized

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Hypothetical Intervention: I have created the Optimal Performance Program (OPP) which is designed to enhance athletic performance through the integration of motivation and arousal regulation. Our aim is to maximize athlete's motivation and regulate arousal levels to achieve high level performance in their respected sports.

Conflicts: Balancing Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is critical to prevent undermining intrinsic motivation.

The optimal arousal levels can create challenges because different athletes require different arousal states for high level performance. This strategy requires individualized approaches.

Synergies: Setting goals can help athletes focus on their personal improvement rather than focus on external outcomes, this helps reduce anxiety and helps them maintain arousal levels.

Allowing them to choose their pre game routine can enhance their autonomy and help them ease into an arousal state

Providing biofeedback improves competence in management of arousal levels.

The Optimal Performance Program (OPP) addresses potential conflicts and synergies which offers a great approach to achieving peak performance. With evaluations and personalized interventions we ensure a high level of arousal and motivation in their respected sport for great physical performance.