Anxiety and ironic effects in aiming at a far target
conference paper
In far aiming the negative intention not to miss may ironically increase the tendency to do precisely that. Although cognitive constraints enhance the occurrence of ironic effects in the perceptual-motor domain the role of anxiety in inducing such effects has rarely been investigated while anxiety is known to play a crucial role in performance decrements in sports (e.g., choking under pressure) and to place a large burden on cognitive resources. Therefore, in the current study we investigated the combined effects of anxiety and negative instructions (to induce ironic effects) on perceptual-motor performance. Participants threw darts under one neutral instruction to hit bulls-eye and one negatively worded instruction not to throw worse than a pre-determined average while positioned either high or low on a climbing wall (i.e., with and without anxiety). Only the combination of high anxiety and the negative instruction led to ironic effects, which is in line with the theory of ironic processes as well as recent theories on choking under pressure.
TNO Identifier
464054
ISBN
978-972-98090-2-6
Publisher
Institute of Sport of the Autonomous Region of Madeira, IP-RAM
Article nr.
P2.48
Source title
Proceedings of the 13th European Congress of Sport Psychology (FEPSAC), Sport and Exercise Psychology : Human Performance, Well-Being and Health. Madeira, Portugal, 12-17 July 2011
Editor(s)
Serpa, S.
Teixeira, N.
João Almeida, M.
Rosado, A.
Teixeira, N.
João Almeida, M.
Rosado, A.
Place of publication
Funchal
Pages
310
Files
To receive the publication files, please send an e-mail request to TNO Repository.