The exercise of research involved observing the players, spectators and other participants in several basketball games. The participants under observation included my son and his team, the coach, other parents and families of the players, before, during and after the match. I also took time to review and evaluate my emotions and reaction on every match.
On the first day, the person of interest was the coach whom I spotted controlling the game. The other persons of interest were the parents, and being one of them I could identify with their emotions as I wanted the best for my child. The children must have been working so hard to ensure they don’t let other team players down and so was the coach working towards ensuring the team delivers good results.
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On day two, the observation was on the kid players within the age of six and eight years. The general observation was that most of the children within this age bracket had difficulties in containing their emotions during the game with some crying and yelling when hurt. Another one could cry when the other team scored until he was granted a free throw. If a team won, they would smile all the way but would show remorse if they lost.
On the third day of observation, the game involved players between the age of thirteen and fifteen. Also in this, I had a son playing for his team. Before the beginning of the match, my son’s team was nervous since they were to face the best team in the league. They were however excited to play with them although the anxiety to win was evident. Their bodies during the game suggested anger and aggression as the opponents were more athletically advantaged. The aggressiveness increased when the opponents beat them 15 points ahead. They however knew how to control their emotions. Before the game, their nervousness was seen with the movements they were making. They lost to this team and all of the players and their coach expressed disappointment.
Emotions and feelings are an important part of the life of any person. It guides them on judging whether something, somebody or an event is good. If one feels good about it, then the conclusion is that the activity is good as well (Baumeister, & Bushman, 2010) . However, if they host any bad feelings against the activity or thing, it turns out to be a bad thing for them. For instance for the third day of the observation, my son’s team lost and together with the coach, they expressed their disappointment after losing the game. However, if they won, they would be happy and even praise the game for being too good for them.
Feelings and emotional reactions are predictable to some extent especially in the event that a situation is recurring. For example, for the player aged seven who would cry when the opponent team scored, it is easy to tell that even in a future contest, he would probably display the same emotion. This is explainable using the concept of affective forecasting which enable a person to predict an individual’s emotional reaction in the future ( Baumeister, & Bushman, 2010) . The coach could probably avoid having the player on the list to avoid any more drama. Moreover, opponent teams may discover this and use it as a point of weakness during the game.
The risk-as-feelings hypothesis is a concept that explains why human beings experience moments of anxiety or fear when they have to face certain situations or things ( Baumeister, & Bushman, 2010; Kobbeltvedt, & Wolff, 2009). For example, in the third observation, my son’s team confessed to being anxious for facing the best team in the league for a match. They would be seen walking around and their body language suggested high levels of anxiety. The anxious feeling emanated from the fact that they had a historical background check of the opponents and they believed that they were better especially with the fact that they were unbeaten for the whole season. The anxiety must have also affected how they trained and prepared for the match with the aggression they portrayed when playing.
The behavior of the players during the third observation session after the opponent team got 15 points ahead of the son’s team showed some panic and increased anxiety as they intensified their aggression in the game. This trend is well explainable using the Yerkes-Dodson law of arousal, attention, and performance ( Cohen, 2011) . Seeing the other team fifteen points ahead triggered the players to panicking and losing the hope of winning. For this reason, their attention was drawn to what they were feeling and not entirely the game. This in turn led to them performing worse and could not make a come-back.
From the discussion above, it is evident that feelings and emotions influence the behavior, attitudes, and how people run their lives. Human feelings are however explainable through social psychology. Theories and concepts have been developed to explain the human feelings as discussed above. However, more research needs to be done on how to humans can train and contain their feelings. For example social psychological training for team leaders could help in better team management. For instance, there could be established law to have games teams have standby psychologists to help in training the team members in controlling and understanding their feelings to even better the performances.
References
Baumeister, R. F., & Bushman, B. J. (2010). Social psychology and human nature, brief version . Nelson Education.
Cohen, R. A. (2011). Yerkes–Dodson Law. In Encyclopedia of clinical neuropsychology (pp. 2737-2738). Springer, New York, NY.
Kobbeltvedt, T., & Wolff, K. (2009). The Risk-as-feelings hypothesis in a Theory-of-planned-behaviour perspective. Judgment and Decision Making , 4 (7), 567.
