Anger and optimal performance in karate : an application of the IZOF model

Abstract

Montse Ruiz Cerezo tutki väitöskirjatyössään emotionaalisten kokemusten ja liikuntasuorituksen välistä suhdetta. Hän tarkasteli espanjalaisten karatekojen suorituksiin liittyvää vihaa ja muita tunnetiloja ja havaitsi, että urheilijat kokivat vihan parantavan suoritusta, koska se tuotti ylimääräistä energiaa. Huonosti menneissä kilpailuissa viha kuitenkin heijasti energian puutetta tai urheilijan kykenemättömyyttä ottaa käyttöön tai hyödyntää omia resurssejaan.

In sports, much research attention has been placed on the study of pre-competitive anxiety; however, a need to examine a wider range of emotions has been emphasized. Anger, as a stress-related emotion, is commonly experienced in competitive sports. While anger is considered to have a negative effect on health and well being, its impact on athletic performance remains unclear.Moreover, athletes’ emotional experiences have typically been studied from a nomothetic approach. While such an approach is useful in the study of inter-individual differences, it is often ineffective when applied to individuals, given that the athletes’ perspective is underestimated. Thus, this study used the IZOF model to examine anger and other emotional experiences prior to, during, and after athletes’ recalled best and worst performances focusing on the intensity, content, and athletes’ perceptions of the functional impact of anger on their performance as well as their perceptions about their optimal states.Results revealed great variability in optimal and dysfunctional levels of anger intensity, which were low, moderate and high for different athletes. Metaphoric descriptions of athletes’ states were also highly individual and holistic reflecting various components of a psychobiosocial state. Symbolic images describing athletes’ best competitions reflected high readiness for action, whereas low readiness for action characterized metaphors in worst competitions. The content of anger and other performance-related states was highly individual varying across the three performance situations and contexts. The athletes perceived their anger as facilitating for performance in terms of the generation of additional energy. However, in worst competitions, anger reflected a lack of energy or an athletes’ inability to recruit or effectively utilize their own resources. Athletes’ perceptions of their optimal states included positive states such as confidence, as well as negative states, such as anger or anxiety.The results, which support the use of an idiographic approach, call for individualized intervention and self-regulation programs, based on each athlete’s specific resources and needs rather than being limited to the simple reduction of negative states such as anger