| Re: Sports Psychology
Hi Peg, more questions? Let's see what I can come up with.
-The inverted U Hypothesis is quickly going out of fashion. It proposes that there is an optimal amount of arousal that an athlete will perform at. However, if that level of arousal is passed then the level of performance will decrease. The same thing happens when the level of arousal is lower than the optimal level .
-The inverted U Hypothesis seems to make sense to most of us, and we can relate this to our own experiences in sports. There is also evidence supporting the inverted U hypothesis in the literature that is fairly recent (1). However, newer research suggests that the inverted U hypothesis is not correct (2).
-There have been, and still are, scientists that argue against the inverted U hypothesis because they consider it to be an oversimplified module of how athletes perform at different stress levels (2).
-Different sports require different levels of arousal. For instance it was proposed that Weight lifting would require a higher level of arousal than Golf (Fig. 2)(3,5).
-One thing that is difficult about the inverted U hypothesis is that it is hard to determine where the top of the curve is.
-The inverted U hypothesis’ sliding according to different activities was proposed, and the hypothesis was put forward that the more physical and general the motor skills needed, the further to the right (higher level of arousal) the curve would be pushed. In contrast, for a sport that needs more fine motor control and thought than physical power, arousal for that sport would need to fall further to the left on the graph to obtain the highest level of performance.
-However, this theory has fallen out of favor in several new papers. You're into pretty heavy questions, Peg, Too bad he answers are just as heavy. Toodles, Tom
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