Emotion and Sport Performance

Abstract

This chapter provides working definitions of emotion and related concepts utilized in the study of emotions and sport performance. It overviews multiple important roles that emotions serve in the resultant behaviors that ultimately influence sport performance. The chapter reviews influential conceptual frameworks that have advanced understanding of emotions as related to sport performance. It highlights empirical work that has contributed deductively to theory testing and inductively to the advancement of knowledge. The integrative model of stress, attention, and human performance incorporates, among others, hypotheses from the attention control theory. The chapter also highlights how emotions alter the fundamental mechanisms underpinning behavioral changes that impact sport performance. It offers pragmatic consideration of how sport psychology research can continue to inform the scientific practice of sport psychology, particularly as related to the development of innovative approaches for emotion regulation.