With less than a month to go until the 2016 Olympics, top athletes around the world are fine-tuning psychological techniques to prepare for the intense emotional pressure of international competition.
While most of us are unlikely to throw a discus or sprint 800 meters any time soon, we all face moments of pressure to succeed, such as taking an exam, giving a speech, or making a three-pointer in a pickup basketball game.
Telling yourself “I can do better’’ can actually make you do better during such moments, according to a psychological study of 44,742 volunteers recently published in the online journal Frontiers in Psychology. Compared to other motivational techniques, positive self-talk was the best way to improve one’s performance and outcome, while motivational videos and visualizing a good performance were also effective.
“We know that emotion influences our thoughts and what we do, so it is a really strong candidate . . . to help someone perform better,’’ says study coauthor Andy Lane, a professor of sport and learning at the University of Wolverhampton in the UK.
“These are relatively simple findings, but are actually quite important.’’
At the BBC Lab UK, a website where the public was invited to take part in experiments, Lane and colleagues asked participants to compete in an online game under pressure. Four-time Olympic champion sprinter Michael Johnson introduced the game in a short video, and then gave instructions on how to get better at performing under pressure. The team then tested which of three psychological skills would help players most improve: positive self-talk (“I can beat my best score’’), imagery (imagining beating one’s best score), or if-then planning (“If I start to doubt myself . . . then I will remind myself I can do it’’). Each skill was tested to see how it affected the four parts of a competitive task: receiving instructions, controlling emotions, the act of competing, and the final outcome.
Each participant played the game four times — as practice, for a baseline measure, and twice with the intervention. People using self-talk — for example,“I can react quicker this time’’ — performed better than controls in every part of the task.
Imagery also helped individuals improve their process and outcomes. If-then planning was the least effective intervention for the online game, though it’s been shown to be useful in other psychological studies, such as for weight loss management.
The results suggest that even brief, online interventions can improve motivation and performance for short-duration tasks that require effort, the authors conclude.
Perhaps best of all, participants enjoyed using the techniques, says Lane. “People were so positive about this.’’ That was just the motivation he and colleagues needed to expand their work. They’re now looking into how online psychological interventions can affect other challenges, such as emotional eating and keeping New Year’s resolutions.
MEGAN SCUDELLARI
