Understanding Anger and Aggression in Sports: Definitions and Implications, Study notes of Psychology

Download Understanding Anger and Aggression in Sports: Definitions and Implications and more Study notes Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Providing Clarity on Anger & Violence in Sports Mitch Abrams, Psy.D. Anger & Violence Special Interest Group January 7, 2016 Despite there being no question about the fact that emotion has significant impact on athletes, anger is an emotion that has been underexplored. Definitions of anger that have permeated for decades lack pragmatic utility that lend themselves to greater understanding and translation into interventions geared towards performance enhancement and transgression reduction. As such, this paper offers definitions for anger, aggression, hostility and violence that refine older models and are compatible with current treatment models in the field of psychology. The International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) published a position statement that defined aggression as the infliction of an aversive stimulus, physical, verbal or gesture upon one person by another (Tenenbaum, Stewart, Singer, & Duda, 1996). Silva (1978) suggests that an aggressive act in sport is intentional and observable, is committed with the intent to injure, and is personal (the person committing the act is responsible for the consequences). These attempts were progressive at the time and demonstrated an effort to fill a void. There were no definitions established in the sports domain. However, those definitions presented utility problems. First, they offered no meaningful relationship between anger and aggression, thus emotion and behavior blended into each other without an explanation of the differentiation or relationship between them. And second, they held the position that aggression has, at its core, harm to another as its goal. This is an incomplete position that is antithetical to the aggressive mandate that we put on athletes when pursuing their goals. Further, when aggression was differentiated between instrumental and reactive (or hostile) aggression, there were some who equated instrumental aggression with assertiveness; which is also not precise. To start, anger is a normal emotion that requires no judgment be placed on it. It is no more a good or bad emotion than happiness, sadness, or any other. Yet, society puts great shame on it making individuals likely to deny that they are angry or justify their emotion and subsequent behavior when it is in response to a provocation. Thus, anger is a normal emotion characterized by antagonism toward someone or something you feel has deliberately done you wrong that is associated with a physiological activation of the sympathetic nervous system. As Speilberger noted and measured in the development of the State Trait Anger Expression Inventories (add dates), anger can be a state of emotional being, how one feels at a given time, or as a trait, lasting longitudinally pointing towards an emotional tendency. Anger may be turned inwards and it can look like depression or withdrawal, and has been associated with high blood pressure and other stress induced physical ailments, or it can be turned outwards in the form of externalizing behaviors such as yelling or physical violence. Anger can be an emotion of action as the physiological surge of the sympathetic nervous system can lend itself to an increase in strength, stamina, speed and a decrease in perception of pain. However, as there is a curvilinear relationship between emotion and pain (with individual and task specific differences), there is a point at which intense anger will decrease performance due to impairment in fine motor coordination, problem solving, decision making and other cognitive processes necessary in sport performance. Anger is neither good nor bad. Athletes do not have to learn how to turn it on or off. It behooves athletes to learn to increase their self-awareness of their emotional state and adjust the volume of their emotions to match the emotional load that a given task requires. Without this, they are prone to mental mistakes that can sabotage peak performance. Aggression or aggressiveness, however, is not describing emotion but rather, behavior. Clearly not all aggressiveness is the same, but stating that all aggression has causing harm to another as the main goal, would leave one concluding that there is no place for being aggressive outside of the most primitive societies and should result in legal punishment. This is not the case. Aggressiveness is the tenacity with which someone pursues their goals. Given the training schedules, obstacles that are in their way, injuries they must overcome, and competitors who would prefer to be victors, success in sport and in life would not be possible if individuals are not aggressive. Perfectionism, persistence, stubbornness, and a healthy dose of obsessiveness are commonplace in high performing individuals. All of these descriptors fall under the aggressiveness umbrella. However, it is also certainly the case that some aggression has harming others as its central aim; and so, differentiation of subtypes of aggression is required. When an athlete perceives the actions or another as provocative or harmful, they may have the urge to respond in kind. Reactive aggression is behavior that has as its primary and References Abrams, M., & Hale, B. (2005). Anger: How to moderate hot buttons. In S. Murphey (Ed.), The sport psychology handbook: A complete guide to today's best mental training techniques (pp. 93-112). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Abrams, M. (2010). Anger management in sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Averill, J.R. (1982). Anger and aggression: An essay on emotion. New York: Springer Verlag. Deffenbacher, J.L. (1999). Cognitive-behavioral conceptualization and treatment of anger. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55, 295-309. Dodge, K.A. (1985). Attributional bias in aggressive children. In P.C. Kendall (Ed.), Advances in cognitive-behavioral research and therapy (Vol. 4). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Dodge, K., Price, J., Bachorowski, J., & Newman, J. (1990). 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