Sports is a competitive physical activity (Sullivan, 1979, p.199). While it generally requires physical strength, sports can also be psychologically and mentally stressful. In fact, over the years numerous sports personalities have suffered from severe psychological issues due to stress. Sports is a interdisciplinary science that draws insights from different related field, one of which is psychology. The psychological and behavioral aspects of sports paved the way for the birth of sports psychology sometime during 1920 in Germany (Cole, 2001) . Sports pyschology centers on the study of psychological factors that affects performance. In this paper, two sports theories will be analyzed for the purpose of drawing insights on the effectiveness and applicability of each theory. Specifically, the author will compare and contrast the Fazey and Hardy's Catastrophe Theory, and Inverted-U Theory.for the purpose mentioned earlier.
Fazey and Hardy's Catastrophe Theory
The Catastrophe Theory was developed in 1987 by John Fazey and Lew Hardy. This sports psychology theory attempts to expound on the interaction between three variables--psychological arousal, cognitive anxiety, and the athlete’s performance (Vitasaria, et al., 2011) . According to Frazey and Hardy, once arousal reached its peak, the level of performance is also at its peak. However, once the arousal is increased, the individual will begin to experience an immediate catastrophic end. Thus, if the level of arousal starts to wear it is difficult to bring it back up.
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Worrying, or cognitive anxiety has a positive linear relationship with performance when the physiological arousal is low.
Cognitive anxiety will create negative correlation with performance when physiological arousal is high;
However, in events when cognitive anxiety is low, physiological arousal creates an reversed U-shaped correlation with performance;
When cognitive anxiety is heightened, there is an increased level of physiological arousal which will lead to a devastating drop in the athlete’s performance. Moreover, with the devastating drop in performance, a large decrease in physiological stimulation is needed to restore performance to its previous a higher level result, again.
Inverted-U Theory
The Inverted U Theory was another performance theory developed in 1908 by psychologists Robert Yerkes and John Dodson. According to the authors, individual perform best when pressure or arousal is high. However, once this level of arousal peaked and the impact decline, you will begin to see a gradual decline in the level of performance. It also goes to say that if the pressure is too low or too high, performance can also go down severely. Unlike the Catastrophe Theory, it is easy to recover the gradual decrease in performance because the fall is not dramatic as the other theory.
Compare and Contrast
The two graphs compare the two theories used in sports psychology—the Fazey and Hardy's Catastrophe Theory, and Inverted-U Theory.
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Catastrophe Theory |
Inverted-U Theory |
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| Graph | ||
| Explanation |
According to the catastrophe theory, once arousal reached its peak, the level of performance is also at its peak. However, once the arousal is increased, the individual will begin to experience an immediate catastrophic end. Thus, if the level of arousal starts to wear it is difficult to bring it back up. This happens when the pressure becomes to intense. At this point the individual begin to feel anxious and scared to fail expectation. As a result, the athlete becomes self-destructive. |
The Inverted-U theory suggests that the individual perform best when pressure or arousal is high. However, once this level of arousal peaked, the athlete will begin to see a gradual decline in the level of performance. The gradual decline might be caused by exhaustion and stress. It also goes to say that if the pressure is too low or too high, performance can also go down. For example, when arousal is too low like there is no challenge because everyone the athlete contends with are lesser to him in terms of strength, speed or skill, the athlete becomes bored. However, if the pressure is too high and the other athlete are all performing well, the athlete might feel too stressed out and exhausted that their energy to perform gradually falls down. |
Table 1: Comparing Fazey and Hardy's Catastrophe Theory, and Inverted-U Theory
Conclusion
After reviewing and analysing the two theories in sports psychology, this paper has come to a conclusion that arousal and performance may have multiple impact to an individual. While there are no significant difference in the factors evaluated and compared in this discussion, it showed how people typically respond to the pressure around them. While others might see the pressure as a challenge to strive harder, some are just too physically exhausted to even continue to excel and perform better. Nevertheless, when the pressure is low people do not perform at their best because they do not see or feel challenged. Some athlete are just not motivated to perform better because there is no competition and they see is as a waste of time to even exert an effort. Hence, everything is mediocre.
References
Chambers, H. (2011, September 4). Catastrophe Theory . Retrieved from Psychology Arousal Blog: http://pe-arousal.blogspot.com/2011/09/catastrophe-theory.html
Cole, B. (2001). Sport psychology: A short history and overview of a field whose time has come, and how it can help you in your sport. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Science .
Muse, L., Harris, S. G., & Feild, H. S. (2003). Has the Inverted-U Theory of Stress and Job Performance Had a Fair Test? Human Performance , 349–364 .
Sullivan, G. (1979). The Complete Sports Dictionary. New York: Scholastic Book Services.
Vitasaria, P., Wahab, M. N., Herawan, T., Sinnadurai, S. K., Othman, A., & Awang, M. G. (2011). Assessing of Physiological Arousal and Cognitive Anxiety toward Academic Performance: The Application of Catastrophe Model. Procedia--Social and Behavioral Science , 615-619.
