Motivation, Arousal, & Anxiety
September 16, 1999
• Motivation
 The coach of a little league baseball team offers $20 to any player who hits a
home run
 The coach of a college football team makes his players watch him swallow a
worm
 A college basketball coach leaves the bench in the middle of a game and sits
in the stands
 A high school coach uses fake blood and blanks to stage his own shooting in
the school cafeteria
 The coach of a college football team requires that his players witness the
castration of a bull
 Anderson, K. (1994) Coach gets cut by players. Sports Illustrated
General Models of Motivation
 Trait Approach—(Personal Factors)
 personality motivates performance (needs, interests, goals)
 early research focused on identifying/measuring trait
 Problem
 personality scales poorl
General Models of Motivation
 Situational Factors
 motivation is primarily determined by situational factors (coaching, facilities)
 Problem: Overjustification Effect
Rewards and Attribution
 Controlling Rewards (designed to influence)
 Informational Rewards (designed to give feedback)
 Overjustification
Effect
and
Professional
Sports
(Deci
&
Ryan)
Cognitive
(Attributions for success/failure)
 Locus of Causality
 Internal (ability, effort)
 External (task difficulty, luck)
 Stability
 Stable (ability, task difficulty)
 Unstable (effort, luck)
 Self-serving bias
Interactional View of Motivation
Sorrentino & Sheppard (1978)
Coaching
 Understand why people participate
 Both situations & traits
 People often have conflicting interests
 Motives Change Over Time
Evaluation
Major Motives for Participation
 Youth Sports:
 improving skills, fun, being with friends, fitness
 Exercise Participation
 initially: health factors, weight loss, fitness, self-challenge, feel better
 later: program enjoyment, social factors
Coaching
 Structure Environment to enhance motivation
 Competition or recreation
 Provide for multiple motives
Coaching
 Be Realistic
 Other physical and psychological factors influencing motivation must be
considered
 Some motivational factors are more easily influenced than others

Imagine that it is only a few minutes before a championship game. Your
opponent in the sport in which you participate has defeated you once earlier
in the season, the only loss you suffered. How do you feel three minutes
before the game begins?
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1 Very anxious
not at all anxious
Arousal, Anxiety, & Stress
 Arousal--neutral emotionally (neustress/eustress)
 Anxiety--negative emotionally (distress)
 cognitive & somatic
 Spielberger’s trait/state anxiety distinction
Measurement
 Physiological measurement of arousal
 biofeedback devices
 Questionnaires
 SCAT and CSAI
Sport Competition Anxiety Test
 SCAT--measure of competitive trait anxiety
 trait anxiety correlates significantly with the amount of state anxiety
experienced just before competition
Scoring
 reverse score items 6 and 11 as:
 1 = often
2 = sometimes 1 = hardly ever
 Do not score “dummy” items 1, 4, 7, 10, and 13
 scores range from 10 (low competitive trait anxiety) to 30 (high competitive
trait anxiety)
Stress Process
 1. Environmental Demand
 2. Individual’s Perception of Demand

 3. Response

arousal, state anxiety, muscle tension, attention shifts
 4. Outcome
Drive Theory
 Monotonic relationship between arousal/anxiety and performance
 As one increase, so too does performance
Inverted-U Hypothesis
 Optimal arousal theory
 Zones of Optimal functioning
 Catastrophe Model (deterioration is not so gradual)
Why Arousal Influences Performance
 Facilitation and Disruption
 Nideffer’s Attentional Shift Model
 low arousal: attention too broad
 high arousal: attention too narrow
 Muscular Tension
 Self-handicapping