EMOTIONS / 001 [DO EMOTIONS HELP OR HURT YOUR SELF CONTROL?]

Question
Are emotions the enemy of discipline?

Study
In this book chapter, researchers summarised experiments on how emotions affect self control. Most studies were done in the lab with students, not athletes.

Findings
Negative emotions can derail you in three ways. First, you start chasing a better feeling right now: sad people ate more and procrastinated, but only when they believed it would improve their mood. Second, intense emotions like anger make you ignore information and take bigger risks. Just one minute of thinking about pros and cons undid that. Third, when you feel bad about yourself, you want to escape that feeling, for example through distraction or alcohol, and you stop keeping an eye on yourself. But emotions also help. Negative emotions signal that you're off track and push you to change. Positive emotions signal progress and can recharge your self control.

What It Means for Athletes
Emotions are a feedback system, not a weakness. The problem starts when you act to get rid of a feeling instead of acting toward your goal, like the retaliation foul after a bad decision by the referee. Keep in mind that this research comes mostly from the lab and some theories have not been fully replicated.

Try this: after a big emotional moment in a match, take one breath before your next decision and ask: what do I want right now, and what does the game need right now?

Source
Baumeister, R. F., Zell, A. L., & Tice, D. M. (2007). How emotions facilitate and impair self-regulation. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 408 to 422). Guilford Press.

BEHIND THE SCIENCE
Translating sports science into information athletes can actually use.