Stress, Coping and Emotions Flashcards
What is stress, according to Lazarus and Folkman, (1984)?
When a situation is appraised as taxing or exceeding an individual’s resources and endangering their well-being
Why is stress seen as a scale/see-saw?
Stress is a balance between demands and resources
What happens if you have lots of resources?
Boredom
What happens if you have too much demands compared to resources?
Stress
An individual may present with the symptoms of stress in a number of different ways:
Cognitive
Behavioural
Somatic
Features of cognitive symptoms of stress?
Negative self statements
All or nothing thinking
Catastrophising (viewing situation as considerably worse than actually is)
Inability to concentrate / focus
Features of behavioural symptoms of stress?
Avoidance
Overtraining
Restlessness
Features of somatic symptoms of stress?
Feeling burnt out
Illness - eg colds, headaches
Insomnia
Lack of appetite
Origins of stress research
Military wanted to know how to select men who would be stress resistant and train them to manage stress
Calculating life stress
1967 - Holmes and Rahe examined whether stress contributed to illness
Developed a scale of what they termed ‘life stressors’
Each stressor was given a ‘weight’ for stress
Participants were asked to tick which stressors they had experienced in last 2 years, level of stress score then calculated
What did Jones and Hardy 1989 suggests the sport environment provided?
The sport environment provides many of the ingredients which invariably create stress in those who participate
Research on stress’ in sport environment Cohn, 1990 Gould et al., 1993 Noblet & Gifford, 2002 Thelwell et al., 2008 Evans et al., 2012
Cohn, 1990 - Golfers
Gould et al., 1993 - Skaters
Noblet & Gifford, 2002 - Australian footballers
Thelwell et al., 2008 - professional batsmen
Evans et al., 2012 - injured athletes
Two sources of stress?
Performance
Organisational
What are performance stessors?
Injury Preparation Expectation - internal/external Self presentation- coach team mates spectator evaluation Rivalry Responsibility
Organisational stress
Leadership issues
- coaches
- coaching styles
Personal issues
- nutrition
- injury
- goals and expectations
Environmental issues
- selection
- finances
- training environment
- travel
Team issues
- team atmosphere
- support network
- roles
- communication
Can some stressors be both performance and organisational
Yes
What do young people want from their parents
Knight et al., 2010;2011; Knight & Hill, 2018
At competitions:
Feedback on effort and attitude rather than technical / tactical
Displaying respect to ref/opp/ coaches
Encouragement for all the team while maintaining control
Provision of positive but realistic feedback after comp
At home and training
Demonstrate an understanding of your child and role of sport in their life
Learn about their sport from other coaches, parents, online
Remember to give your child time just to be a child - it’s not all about sport
Why is understanding parental stressor important?
Reduce stress for parents
Provide a more positive relationship between parent and child
Move beyond seeing sports parents as “pushy parents”
Long term strategy to help sport parents?
Educational workshops
Working with parents sport model (WWPS-model) - Lafferty & Triggs, 2014
What does stage 1 include in the WWPS model?
Led by coaches and managers
Icebreaker activity - key questions + collaborative ethos
Knowledge and understanding of the sport - rules and reg
Procedure - key policies relevant to athletes confidentiality + channels of communication
Roles - roles and responsibilities parents have at this level
Relationships - how will support networks work with parents
What is included in stage 2 of the WWPS model?
Led by sports psychologist
Private and small group sessions
Emotional involvement- relationship between this and positive parenting, how influences performance and ways of providing emotional support
Emotional control and management- strategies for developing emotional control and evaluating performance
What’s the aim for the WWPS model?
Help parents develop effective support mechanisms and improve relationships with key personnel in sporting structure
Research on need of education for parents
Shields et al. (2005) found 13% parents self reported to angrily criticised child’s performance
Defrancisco and Johnson (1997) 1/3rd youth tennis players felt parents had embarrassed them during performance
Gould et al. (2006) tennis coaches believed 36% parents negatively influenced development
Camila Knight influential in sport parent research
Lazarus and Folkman (1984)
Rational approach
Personal factor Environmental factor
(Beliefs about self) (demands of stress in env)
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Primary Appraisal Secondary Appraisal
What’s at stake for me? / \
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Harm/Threat/Challenge Outcome/Expectation
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Coping
Personal factors
Each individual will bring something different to the situation
- goals: without goal no potential for stress
- beliefs and self & world
- personal resources: characteristics (eg intelligence) and resources (eg supportive family)
What is an appraisal?
Our subject interpretation of the stimuli in our environment
Lazarus and Folkman use appraisal as a way to explain our responses to potentially stressful events
Primary appraisal
Has it already caused any damage?Harm Appraisal Will it cause any future damage? Threat appraisal Could it be overcome? Challenge appraisal
Threat vs challenge?
T = Seeing potential for harm
(Increased cortisol, negative emotions, unsuccessful performance)
C = seeing the potential for gain
(Increased catecholamines, Decreased vascular resistance, positive emotions, successful performance)
Re-appraisal
Individuals can reappraise their emotional and physiological reactions to stressful situations as more helpful for performance
What is coping?
Constantly changing cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage specific external and or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person (Lazarus and Folkman)
What is coping style?
Preferred set of coping strategies that remain relatively fixed across time and circumstances (Carver, Scheier & Weimtraub, 1989)
Trait approach to coping
Individuals have stable coping styles
Set coping strategies across any situation
Process approach to coping?
Coping is dynamic (changing) constantly changing efforts to manage stress
Takes into account person and environmental variables
What happens with coping styles training vs competition?
Training - consistency in coping in training
Stable, repeatable stressors
Competition - little consistency in coping during competition
Constantly changing stressors
Forms of coping
Problem and emotion focus
Problem focused coping
Intention to manage the problem that is causing stress
Possibly take action to remove the threatening event or to lessen its efforts impact
Emotion Focused coping
Involves efforts to regulate the emotional responses to the situation
Alter only what’s in the mind of the athlete
Included strategies such as imagery or positive self talk
Approach coping
Confronting the source of stress
Taking direct action, increasing effort and planning
Avoidance coping
Physically or mentally disengaging from the situation
More effective for short term stress where consequences may change on their own accord
Appraisal focused
Cox & Ferguson, 1991 - re evaluation of a situation to reduce its importance
Goodness of fit approach
How well the coping suits the situation
Problem focused ‘fits’ controllable situations
Emotion focused ‘fits’ uncontrollable
However it is difficult to test
Outcome measures
Did our coping strategy achieve what it was supposed to
What were the intended outcomes
Could there also be some unintended outcomes
Eg taking performance enhancing drugs
- may help performance
- but may damage health
Coping fluctuations
Some research states that it is not the goodness of fit that determines effectiveness but the choice of strategy deployed (Eubank & Collins, 2000; Nichols et al, 2006)
Nicholas (2007) effectiveness of a coping strategy fluctuated from day to day and even when in the same competition
Coping automaticity
Gould et al. (1993) wrestlers in their study coped more effectively because their coping strategies were more automatic
Choking
The occurrence of inferior performance despite striving and incentives for superior performance
(Baumeister & Showers, 1986)
How can we explain choking?
1) Distraction
2) Self focus ie conscious processing hypothesis
Two theories of choking?
Catastrophe theory - association between anxiety and performance
(Hardy & Fazey, 1987)
Conscious processing hypothesis
No pressure perform skills automatically - increase in pressure causes anxiety - start to focus on ourselves and what we are doing - by thinking we consciously control the skill - we don’t perform as well
Two theories of self consciousness
Masters
Baumeisters
Masters theory
Self conscious individuals are more likely to choke - they will be unable to handle the situation
Baumeisters
Self conscious individuals are less likely to choke - they will be used to feeling self avoiding and know how to cope with this
Predictors of chocking (implicit vs explicit)
Masters (1992) showered that skill disruption will be less likely if the skill has been learned implicitly
How to reduce the likelihood of choking?
Lower anxiety (strategies)
Re appraisal of situation (cognitive restructuring)
Just do it approach
Ensure that skills are learnt implicitly (fewer rules)
Work with players to make them more/less self conscious
Examine thought processes under pressure - can we train players focus on something other than the skill itself under pressure (eg music, pre performance routines)
What are emotions?
Emotions are typically described in terms of their subjective experience, associated behaviours or action tendencies abs patterns of physiological activations (Gross, 2008)
Relatively Brief periods of time, occurs in response to particular object/circumstances
Emotion regulation - 3 core features
1) Goal - what is the athlete trying to accomplish
2) Strategy - what process can they engage in order to reach this goal
3) Outcome - what are the consequences of trying to achieve the goal using those selected strategies
Who’s theory is zone of optimum functioning
Hanin (2000)
Modal model of emotion
Situation - could be internal or external Attention Attention Appraisal Responses
Emotion regulation - Gross & Thompson (2007)
Situation selection - taking actions making it more/less likely to end up in situation that gives desirable or undesirable emotions
Situation modification - modifying some aspects of the environment to achieve a desirable emotional state
Attention deployment - focusing attention on something that positively impacts emotion
Cognitive change - changing the meaning to reduce self blame
Response modulation - regulating physiological and cognitive symptoms
Process model of emotion regulation
Situation Situation Attention Cognitive Response
Selection Modification Deployme Change Modulatio
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Situation Attention Appraisal Response
Self talk
Central to cognitive interventions for acidity reduction, emphasis positive self talk
Research completed by Hatzigeorgiadis et al. (2004, 2009)
Two components of anxiety
Cognitive
- Mental component, which is characterised by : Negative expectation about success, negative self talk, worries about performance, images of failure
Somatic
- Physiological element. Negative symptoms include: Feelings of nervousness, high blood pressure, dry throat, rapid heart rate
What is centering?
Involves paying close attention to inhalation and exhalation while noticing every sensation. This technique can automatically reduce anxiety and distractions when needed (Quinn, 2020)
Birth of positive psychology
Psychology has long focused on suffering
Before 21st century we rarely considered what makes life worth living
Selignab launched the idea of positive psychology
What is positive psychology
Scientific study of virtue, meaning, resilience and well-being, as well as evidence based applications to improve the lives of individuals and society (Wong, 2011)
Focuses on strengths rather than weakness
Enables individuals to be at their best
A misconception of positive psychology
It does not mean that positive psychology’s ignite difficulties, rather they might take a strength based approach to consider how someone may overcome a stress
Example of positive psychology
The African Violet women and Erikson
The good life
The good life is not an outcome to be achieved but a process that we are constantly engaged with and moving towards when we are the authors of our own lives
These include movements:
Away from disguises, away from oughts, away from expectation and pleasing others
Towards openness to experience, acceptance, trusting oneself
Seligman elements to enhance wellbeing, intrinsically motivating and quantifiable measurable
P ositive emotions E ngagement R elationship M eaning A ccomplishment
Eudaimonia
U-day-monia
Seeking to fulfil our potential in life
Self-actualisation
Volunteering for charity
Being mindful
Challenging activities that demand skills (sport, hobby)
Hedonism
Speaking pleasure, enjoyment, comfort or relaxation
Partying
Attending sport events
Immediate pleasure - the pleasures of life
Emergence of growth
Stories of positive change after adversity are common place
- religion
- philosophy
- folk tales
- mythology
- film/television
- books
Could adversity serve as a catalyst to growth in sport
Elite athletes (Howells & Fletcher, 2015) Injured athletes (Roy-Davis et al., 2017)
Multilevel model of growth following adversity
Policy
Local policies National P
Cultural
Cultural narratives Collective values
Institutional
Physical environment Psychosocial architecture
Interpersonal
Social networks Support systems
Interpersonal Injured
Athlete
Values - Beliefs - Attitudes
Cognitions - Affect - Behaviour
How can we foster growth
Stephen Joseph, 2011
T aking stock - ensuring safety and manage stress tolerance levels
H arvest hope - learn to be hopeful about future
R e-authoring - tell your story to find a new perspective
I dentify change - journaling to track changes in identify
V alue change - develop an awareness for new priorities
E xpressing change in action - actively seek to put growth into the external world
