Confidence

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  • Created by: z_mills1
  • Created on: 26-03-15 09:06

Self-confidence and self-efficacy

Self-confidence -> a person's belief in their ability to achieve success

  • confident athletes expect to do well and have high levels of self-belief - crucial in how far they strive towards their goals
  • confident athletes are not afraid of making mistakes/take calculated risks to take charge of a situation
  • self-doubters avoid responsibility/become overly consevative and paralysed by the fear of failure

Self-efficacy -> situation specific self-confidence e.g. footballer is confident taking penalties

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Bandura's model

Performance accomplishments -> previous successes at the task

  • achievements in training and competition forms the basis of future expectations of success or failure
  • repeated success will lead to positive expectations of further success, higher motivation and enhanced self-belief
  • repeated failures can lead to a downward performance spiral and a ‘snowball effect’ -> start to believe that success is not possible
  • It is vital for a coach to make sure that early success is achieved

Vicarious experiences -> watching others of similar standard successfully perform a skill

  • performers can gain confidence from viewing other people achieving their own successful performances
  • it is important that a performer of similar ability to the person observing the achievement achieves the success

Verbal persuasion -> encouragement from significant others

  • performers shown that others (i.e. the coach) have confidence in their abilities and believe they can achieve their set goals

Emotional arousal -> perceiving physiological arousal as indicating emotion

  • how someone interprets their own emotional arousal can influence performance
  • important that physiological symptoms (e.g. heart rate) are perceived positively not negatively
  • over-arousal hinders performance by making performer less confident 
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Strategies to increase self-efficacy

  • Performance accomplishments/success from previous performances/reminding performer of previous success
  • Avoid failure this can hinder self-efficacy
  • Organise successful events/gradually increase task difficulty/make task easier
  • Vicarious experiences/watching successful performances
  • More effective if performers are of similar ability
  • Verbal persuasion/encouragement/positive feedback/reinforcement from coach
  • Emotional arousal/stress management techniques/mental rehearsal/establish set routines
  • Set goals/targets/performance goals rather than outcome goals
  • Avoid social comparison with other performers
  • Use attributions correctly/attribution retraining/encouraging self-serving bias 
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Social facilitation and inhibition

Social facilitation – the influence of the presence of others on performance/presence of others increases arousal

Social inhibition – the negative effect of an audience on performance

-> distractions lead to conflict, increases arousal, decreases performance

  • Audience (watching either at event or at home) - passive observers
  • Co-actors (performing same task but not in competition) 
  • Competitive co-actors (in direct competition with player)
  • Social reinforcers (direct influence eg coach)
  • Linked to the Drive Theory -> as arousal increases so does likelihood of dominant response/habit occurring
  • Experienced players perform better/simple skills
  • Novice players perform worse/complex skills

Presence of others produces two types of effects:

  • improved performance on simple/well-learnt tasks
  • decreased erformance on complex/not well-learnt tasks
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Evaluation apprehension

Evaluation apprehension

-> a sense of anxiety caused by a performer's thinking that their performance is being watched and judged by somebody 

  • suggests others only have influence if performer feels they are being judged
  • the more expert/influential the observer, the more likely EA will occur
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Baron's distraction-conflict theory

Baron linked the prescence of an audience to information processing

-> suggesting that an audience takes up much of our attentional capacity

  • sufficient attention left to cope with simple tasks
  • complex tasks require more attention
  • presence of audience creates more demand on our attention -> increases arousal and affects performance
  • suggests performers must focus on task and ignore audience
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Home field advantage

  • Home support tends to improve performance/social facilitation effect/boost self-efficacy/lower levels of anxiety
  • More matches won at home than away/during early rounds of competitions/Olympic & World medals by host nation
  • Home teams tend to play more attacking styles/ tactics/functional aggressive behaviour 
  • Proximity effect/closeness of crowd has negative effect on visiting teams
  • Larger crowd/hostile crowd has a negative effect on visiting teams
  • Away team commit more fouls/can become anxious/over-aroused due to crowd or unfamiliar surroundings
  • Increased pressure from the home crowd
  • More important the game the greater the pressure/ choke effect/championship choke
  • Performers become more self-conscious at home causing over-arousal
  • Players place more pressure on themselves at home matches due to expectations
  • Social inhibition for the home team
  • Evaluation apprehension for the home team
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Strategies to eliminate lack of confidence

  • Mental rehearsal/imagery/visualisation -> 'block out the audience'
  • Train in front of others and gradually increase the numbers
  • Improve selective attention and cut out the effect of the audience
  • Reduce the importance of the event
  • Avoid social comparison with others/coach in a non-evaluative environment initially/verbal encouragement
  • Encourage team mates to be supportive
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