Abstract
Stress often has a negative influence on sports performance. Stress-induced decreases in performance can be especially disastrous for risk sports athletes, who often put their life at risk when practicing their sport. Therefore, it is of great importance to identify protective factors in stressful situations in risk sports. On average, risk sports athletes score extremely high on the personality trait sensation seeking. At the same time, theoretical considerations about dispositional mindfulness suggest that mindful athletes can handle stress more effectively. The main goal of this experiment is to examine the influence of sensation seeking and mindfulness on the stress response to a risk sport-specific stressor. To induce stress, 88 male students completed the Heidelberg Risk Sport-Specific Stress Test (HRSST) which utilizes fear of falling as the stressful event during a climbing exercise. Psychological (anxiety) and physiological (cortisol) responses were measured at multiple time points before and after the HRSST to determine the severity of the stress response. In reaction to the stressor, a significant increase in self-reported state anxiety, but no significant increase in cortisol were observed. The mindfulness subscale external observation correlated positively with anxiety in the climbing wall, sensation seeking and the anxiety scales after the jump correlated negatively and sensation seeking predicted anxiety subscales after the jump in hierarchical regression analyses. However, mindfulness did not predict anxiety measures. Neither sensation seeking nor mindfulness correlated significantly with cortisol levels. The results suggest that high sensation seekers perceive a risk sport-specific stressor as less stressful. The missing physiological response might be explained by the Cross-Stressor-Adaptation-Hypothesis and particularities of the sample. Good internal observers might be especially aware of their need of stimulation and new experiences, which in turn might explain the higher experience-seeking scores. Future studies should further examine the role of mindfulness in stressful situations and the interaction of its subscales with sensation seeking. The current experiment offers new possibilities for adjoining research fields at the interface between sports sciences, psychology and medicine: The findings can be transferred to high risk professions such as police officers, firefighters and military forces (e.g., for selection processes or for interventions).
Highlights
Athletes plunge from mountains only wearing a wingsuit, free climbers scale high rock faces without any form of protection, and surfers aim to ride huge waves before they break the shores
The cortisol values were checked for plausibility: All values that were located outside the area that can be assessed for analyses using the assay (0.414–41.4 nmol/l) were excluded
As there were no significant correlations between the experimental condition and the criteria, this potential covariate was not included into the regression analyses
Summary
Athletes plunge from mountains only wearing a wingsuit, free climbers scale high rock faces without any form of protection, and surfers aim to ride huge waves before they break the shores. In addition to being high in sensation seeking, narrative research indicates that risk sports athletes describe their strengths in risky situations in words that resemble mindful mindsets (Arijs et al, 2017; Houge Mackenzie and Brymer, 2018). Based on these data, an intriguing question is whether dispositional mindfulness may contribute to risk sports athletes’ positive emotional responses and functioning in highly demanding situations. Building on existing narrative research, the aim of the present study is to provide an experimental examination of the protective influence of sensation seeking and mindfulness on risk sport-specific stress responses
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