The Research on Influences of Emotion on Sports Decision Making

Transcription

1 rd AASRI Conference on Computational Intelligence and Bioinformatics (CIB 2015) ISBN: The Research on Influences of Emotion on Sports Decision Making Fen Qiu P.E. Department of Wuhan University of Technology, Hubei, Wuhan, China ABSTRACT: The sport decision making was a high-level cognitive activity. The emotional factors had effect on the decision making on some extent besides the cognitive factors. This study analyzed the process of sport decision making and the appearance and development of emotion based on the decision making and emotion in sports, then it discussed the influencing mechanisms and results. KEYWORDS: Emotion, Sport decision making, Cognition, Effect. The sports are characterized by the direct participants of both body movements and brain cognitive processing, and during the process, with the emotional experience comes about, there must be some effects on the sports individual. The decision in sport is an advanced cognitive process [1]. Through the study of the sport decision making, the researchers have discussed cognitive factors such as the amount of information and the style of cognition [2]. Based on the detailed summary about these cognitive factors, students like Payne pointed out that the emotional factor, to some extent, could have effect on the decision making [3]. Affectivity and emotion involvement, which play an important role in athlete s activities, have influence on this cognitive process of sport decision making. However, due to the uncertainty of the consequence, the prominent utility of society, and the breathtaking competitiveness in sport, a great variety of emotional experience may be induced. 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Sport decision-making issue The psychological definition of the phrase decision making is the whole process of the exploration, judgment, evaluation, and last choice for the aim and method of the movement [4]. So the counterpart of the phrase sport decision making is the cognitive process of predicting consequence and selecting movement guiding with agonistic goal in complex sport situation [5]. The sport decision making, which is also called cognitive decision making, is an analytic decision making. Wang bin regard that there are two different types of decision makings in sport: cognitive decision making and intuition decision making [6]. In sport, every act of sporter finishes by the command of the brain, which is regarded as the decision center of motor behavior. The difference between sport decision making and general decision making is that the former possesses the spatiality of the problem, the timing stress of the process, and the uncertainty of the consequence [2]. The sport situation characterizes timely feedback, by which once the decision has made, the reaction will be seen. The speed and accuracy are the important criterion to measure the sport decision-making level. The issues athletes face in matches are always in special form, both rivals and partners positions and the target state make up a special issue situation. In many cases, the process of sport decision making is required to be completed rapidly, even instantly. The opportunities of offense and defense are fleeting, a correct and timely decision can score or make a successful defense so as to take the initiative; otherwise, the opportunities, even the whole game may be lost. The decision making in the state of sport depends on not merely the decision maker, but also the changes and influence from the context. Same decision in the same state may cause difference results; the result performs once decision has been made. So action only based on result can grab the initiative. 1.2 The emotional issue in sport What means physical exercise is that a practical activity which, with the direct aim of pursuing individual physical and mental health and all-round development, through the direct participation of body, resulted from individual cognitive activities such as perception and thinking. In sport, one of the 148

2 important sources for the emergence and development of emotion is the large amount of the cognitive activities from the cerebral cortex. During the process of learning, training, and competing in sport, the emotional experience is characterized by brightness, strength, diversity, and mutability. Especially in competition, there is a mutual relationship between needs of the athletes and different factors such as strength of the rival compared with themselves, level of the referee, spot command of the coach, tendency of the audience, and changeable situation in different periods. Then here comes a great variety of emotional experience. After the research of wrestler, scholars like Morgan have found that, there are significant differences between successful and unsuccessful athletes, on the mental features of tension, depression, anger, fatigue, confusion, and so on; then, the research of the rowers form him and Johnson showed that an excellent athlete scores high in positive emotion and scores low in negative emotion. Emotional response can discriminate athletes from nonathletes, in which athletes should score higher in dynamic dimension and score lower in the situation of tension, depression, anger, fatigue, confusion, and so on[7]. Thus it can be seen that, it is easy for sport to give rise to more various emotional response, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. 2 THE INFLUENCE MACHINE OF EMOTION IN SPORT DECISION MAKING 2.1 The process of cause and development for the emotion Vallerand said that cognitive evaluation is the main cause of the emotion[8]. He divided the cognitive evaluation into intuitive evaluation and reactive evaluation, and according to the research, the intuitive evaluation always participates in forming the emotion while the reactive evaluation does not quite frequently. Though reactive evaluation plays a vital role in bringing about emotion in some cases, the intuitive evaluation can do so without the help of the former. All the information from outside should be first intuitive evaluated. When the result of the evaluation basically matches the cognitive structure, there is no need for further cognition because the existed structure so adaptable with each other as to bring about the emotional experience; when not matched, especially in some vital part of self and cognitive structure, people will raise the wake-up level in order to perform the reactive evaluation, managing to assimilate information in existed structure, or adapt to it in new structure to lower the wake-up level. In actual physical exercise or match, factors as unpredicted circumstance, the difficulty level of the task, and the internal and external interference, can all be reflected in the emotion during or after the actions. Thus both two cognitive evaluations can influence the emotional response after sport. The research from Hill and Biddle showed that, the winner s positive self-evaluation is mainly related to emotion, capability, and motivation, while the failure s always accounts for fortune, personality of both himself and his rival[9]. 2.2 The cognitive process of sport decision making Ripoll pointed out that, there are two different vision functions in sport: one is the semantic vision function, which is used to identify and explain the situation; the other is the sensorimotor vision function, which is used to execute the response[10]. The process of sport is so-called feel-then-do process. If athlete pays more attention to understand the sport situation and the semantic message, such as the track, location, and time, he will tend to make right decision mainly based on the accuracy which is comparatively safe; if he pays more attention to grab the sensorimotor message, and care about how to do it, he will make decision at once mainly based on the speed which is relevantly risky. What an athlete faces is to seek the balance between the time permitted and needed, which obliges him to adjust the criterion of the speed accuracy decision. 2.3 The influence process of sport decision making Sport decision making is an important period in sport study, training, and match, and the emotion arises and develops with the cognitive activities from the cerebral cortex in sport. Recently, with the further research on the relationship between cognition and emotion, the understanding of the emotional influence on the process of decision making becomes comprehensive and incisive. Scholars like Loewenstein stated that in the process of decision, there were not only predictable emotions which were influenced by cognitive evaluation but also immediate emotions which were not and could directly influence the decision making, and further the cognitive evaluation[11]. Neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists ever emphasized the role of the information import in decision making and the negative result when it is blocked. Clore and Schwarz proposed the feeling information theory, which emotion could be a information track to directly influence the judgment[12]. Slovic and his companions proposed the Affect heuristic which emphasized the vital role of emotion to the risk perception and movement[13]. Damasio came up with the Somatic Mark Assumption which the body reaction could provide the need of the body in considering a certain selection and emotion might cause some physical reaction[14]. Wilson s team found that the quality of decision making was largely influenced when 149

3 allowing the decision maker to consider every aspects of the decision while restraining the emotion import[15]. In this research, emotion becomes an vital element of the decision making, which is equal to, even beyond the cognition in the process. This proves that, indeed, the existence of emotion influences the decision making. Emotion could also influence the timely, rapid, and highly automated intuitive decision. In this process, emotion is always accompanied by strong emotional power. The emotional factor works faster than cognitive factor, so emotion effects previously in some time. Thus, it can influence and even guide the cognitive process. Due to the fact that athlete performs and changes significantly in matches, it is nature to infer that emotion can influence the sport cognitive decision making. 3 THE EFFECT OF EMOTION ON DECISION MAKING 3.1 The influence on cognition Plenty of evidence shows that emotion directly influences decision-making behavior in psychology literature. Usually, emotion and cognition work together on guiding decision-making behavior coordinately, while in some cases, they conflict with each other, leaving decision and behavior abnormal. Study about anxiety shows that people s emotional response often deviates from cognitive assessment in dangerous situation, and in this situation, the emotional response is often in a dominant position, leading an abnormal behavior. This is particularly obvious in sports, for example, shooting athletes often fail to hit or away from the target because of the anxiety and stress, but it s almost impossible for the professional athletes in the usual training. Emotional reactions can deviate from cognition, as well as affect cognition. Study shows that emotion can make people s cognitive process be selective, such as attention, perception, and memory. The study found that people selectively extract and process the information in accordance with the current mood, for example, people will remember more pleasant things when under a pleasant mood, making the positive judgment and choice; while people are easier to remember sad things when they are under negative emotional states, making a pessimistic judgment and choice. Thus, we often talk about the success and happiness in life to alleviate the athlete s anxiety and tension, or encourage building the confidence, making the athlete actively take part in training and be confidence in game. Emotion also affects the choice of processing of information, cognitive strategies and styles, and so on. 3.2 The influence on the motion decision-making process In the analysis of decision-making process, researchers mainly inspect the three indicators, namely processing extent, processing consistency, and processing pattern[16]. Coping behavior model of Susan and Lazarus believes activated emotion can lead to a series of coping behaviour[17]. The coping behavior can be divided into two categories: taking the question as the focus of coping, aiming to solve the problems caused by emotions, in order to increase the accuracy of decision making; with emotion as the focus, aiming to reduce emotions, rather than changing external environment. With the additional cognitive task, individuals tend to choose low requirements on cognitive resources, but cannot guarantee the accuracy of the heuristic strategy. The strategy selection is mainly based on the cognitive effort minimization standard. While in the high accuracy demand conditions, individuals tend to choose high requirements on cognitive resources and high standards of the rational model. The strategy selection is mainly based on the maximizing accuracy standard. There are emotions involved in the decisionmaking process in motion, the athlete will be directed at solving different problems and tending to focus on different problems. They put their efforts into decision-making behavior or reducing the emotional, which can affect the processing consistency. But the effort to reduce the emotional will inevitably lead to cognitive resources for decision making on the reduction, which affects the decision-making process of processing extent and processing pattern. For example, sports athletes appear anxiety or excitement will increase the cognitive task, consumption of cognitive resources, thereby reducing the cognitive resources for motor operation, so that making the processing extent, processing consistency, and processing pattern deviation or imbalance. This will ultimately affect the movement of problem solving. Therefore, with emotion in sports, athletes often can't play sports level normal. 3.3 The influence on exercise decision results Emotions affect the speed and accuracy of motion decision making. Motion decision making is a kind of advanced cognitive process, as well as the central part of mental activity in sports. Decision-making process involves the comparative selection and assessment in option, so it would take a certain cognitive resources. And the decision-making process in motion situation has a time limit, needs to be done in a very short time. Kahneman (1973) thought people would be restricted by the limited cognitive resources in the process of classification and recognition to stimulation information[18]. 150

4 Every cognitive activity needs possession and consumption of certain cognitive resources. Different emotions will have different effects on cognitive process, as well as the senior decisionmaking process of cognitive activities. Motion decision making should be on the basis of perception and attention from situational stimulation. However, emotions could affect the selective processing, attention, and the accuracy of memory as well as the decision-making process. Motion decision making is advanced cognitive process. Emotions have various effects on cognition, not only in terms of processing speed and accuracy but also cognitive structure. The study of Isen (1992, 1993) showed that positive emotions can promote the flexibility of thinking, and the happy men are able to make the conception association, find the difference and complex relationship to the stimulator than people in general feeling[19]. Negative emotions can distract people and reduce cognitive resources used in decision-making tasks[20]. With the reduced cognitive resources, people will be more inclined to use heuristic strategies, which cannot guarantee the accuracy. The performance of decision mainly includes the speed and accuracy of decision making. When the emotion is generated, it can change the cognitive structure of decision making. As the advanced cognitive process of decision making, the speed and accuracy could be affected. So when the athletes are happy, they can quickly judge and find the countermeasure, even receive the unexpected result than usual. For example, in the basket and football competition, the team in advantages will play much better, and the team in disadvantages will play much worse. It is associated with players mood. In favorable circumstances, the athletes usually have active mind, and they can create a pretty pass and a decisive offence, while the athletes in adversity do not have active mind, easily distract from the game. Due to the cognitive resources decreased, the athletes can hardly grasp the chance to pass and attack, as well as the choice of tactics. The emotional impact of decision making in sports and exercise performance has been verified in practice. Positive emotion and negative emotion will affect the performance of player, especially when there are many cognitive motion, complex sports skills, fine muscle activity, and the activities required the coordination and stability, such as golf, table tennis, tennis, shooting, and gymnastics. Anxiety and anger will affect the accuracy and success rate of serve, as well as the judgment and using tactics. The joyful mood can make the competitor play the normal or extraordinary level. 4 CONCLUSIONS Movement decision is an important part of learning, training. and competition. For those more complex, complete, and the collective sports projects, the level of decision making directly affects the athletes skills and performance [21]. Emotion that accompanies with people and the physical activity and brain cognitive activities play together in movement situations, which are more likely to induce real emotions. There is a direct causal relationship between movement decision making and the main body. To explore the influences on sport decision making produced by emotional factors, deepen the understanding of the decisionmaking behavior of sports. It still needs to further explore the influence on movement decision making produced by different emotions and its effects on the different types of sports. REFERENCES [1] G. Tennenbaum, M. Bar-Eli, Decision making in sport: a cognitive perspective. 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