Arousal and Anxiety Level Influences on Golf Putting Performance

Arousal levels can help and hinder performance in various sports and many athletes manipulate arousal levels during practice or competitions. Professional golfers typically putt in complete silence but studies have shown that stimulus can help performance. Twelve participants completed general and sport anxiety questionnaires before completing 3 golf putts at a target under 30 seconds with a music stimulus for each group. Music stimulus had an affect on the moderate arousal level groups showing the best performance with the slowest time to complete the putting task. This shows that putting may be performed better with moderate auditory arousal to produce peak performance in competition atmospheres. AROUSAL INFLUENCE ON PUTTING 3 Arousal and Anxiety Level Influence on Golf Putting Performance Anxiety is an emotional response that includes feelings of tension, nervousness, and worry that is linked with an increased activation of the sympathetic nervous system and affects many people in the US population. Anxiety disorders affect about 19% of the US population in 2017, with women being twice more likely than men to be affected (2017). Anxiety influences behavior, cognition, and performance in a variety of situations among most people. The sympathetic nervous system is part of the autonomic nervous system that stimulates a fight or flight response. This fight or flight response may cause anxiety for a person depending on the severity of response itself, but this sympathetic response often times has a negative impact on performance for tasks that may not require increased anxiety levels. Anxiety responses differ per person in terms of overall anxiety and anxiety related to sport. This stimulation of the body in a negative way is considered somatic anxiety (Roberts, Hart, & Eastwood, 2016). The body feels these stressors and reacts to them, inducing increased heart rate, sweating, or blood pressure change. Behavior plays a role of trying to prevent these sensations from occurring by avoiding situations that may cause the stressor such as not going outside to avoid social interaction or wearing oversized clothes to cover the body to avoid judgment from others. In addition, cognition or cognitive anxiety can be defined as negative expectations and concerns about one’s self, a situation, and possible consequences that may occur (Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump, & Smith, 1990, p. 541). This is the negative thoughts that come with a situation that may be concerning for a person and possibly induce stress. Cognitive processes include worrying and concentration disruption. In addition, affects of anxiety on behavior and cognition can influence performance. Arousal level appears as a component of anxiety (Smith, Smoll, Cumming, & Grossbard, 2006). Anxiety and arousal can be AROUSAL INFLUENCE ON PUTTING 4 considered interchangeable. It can flood the brain with sympathetic nervous system stimulation. In some cases this may increase performance, and in others it may hinder performance based on the person and the situation the person is involved in (Hardy & Hutchinson, 2007). Performance anxiety can come from many different aspects of life such as different types of training in relation to game time play, cognitive thinking before time of play, or even a person’s preperformance routine (Hanton, Wadey, & Mellalieu, 2008). One arousal performance theory is the Inverted U Hypothesis. This is a theory on how moderate arousal is optimal for peak performance while low or high arousal hinders performance. It is thought that each person would perform the best at a “moderate” level (Yerkes & Dodson, 2007). The level of anxiety a person experiences will be not too high and not too low. This arousal is individualized per personal but still “moderate” to the individual. To counter this theory, there is the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning theory. This theory claims that each individual person has a different level of arousal that produces his or her own peak performance (Hanin, 1997). This may not be moderate arousal but low or even high arousal. Arousal/anxiety may vary per person and is not a standard moderate level. One person’s moderate arousal level could equate to another’s low arousal level for example, but the individuals are not necessarily at moderate arousal. McMillan and Osterhouse (1972) found each group to have more high and low anxiety levels influencing the task performed by the participants. Participants who had low arousal showed to have better testing performance than those who had moderate or high arousal levels, but over all each person had different anxiety/arousal levels as a stimulus. Arousal can be induced by many different variables, one of them being music. Music tempo and volume has been shown to affect heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure; and it can be used to affect arousal and relaxation (Bernardi, 2005). A study by Thompson, AROUSAL INFLUENCE ON PUTTING 5 Schellenberg, and Husain showed that classic Mozart music helps lower arousal in young adults (2001). Classical music is often used to calm babies when they are upset or cranky. Heavy metal, hard rock music that has a fast pace tempo has the opposite effect by in increasing heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure (Labbé, Schmidt, Babin, & Pharr, 2007). The variables involved will be anxiety/arousal level in general life as well as in a sports atmosphere, training level for putting, perceived putting performance outcome, and time taken to complete three putts out of 30 seconds. Different arousal theories have been used to analyze sport arousal such as the Inverted U Hypothesis and the Individualized Zones of Optimal functioning (IZOF) and will be used as a guide for analysis of arousal in this study (Pineschi & Di Pietro, 2013). Although these two theories are being evaluated, there is not significant evidence that suggests any specific arousal theory is more influential as theories are continuing to be developed (Raedeke & Stein, 1994). In summary, it is predicted that the IZOF theory is the accurate theory for this study. It is hypothesized that there will be a significant difference between the mean scores between the treatment music/arousal groups and control group; lower averages, meaning better performance, are predicted to be performed by the moderate-high anxiety group verses the none or low anxiety group. Also, the control group is predicted to take more time to complete the task due to lower arousal/ anxiety levels.