Emotional States: the investigation of fear in the sporting context.

Abstract

By doing a qualitative research, using the technique of life history and analysis of thematic content, this paper’s objective was to investigate the situations or events that might bring to life the feeling of fear in athletes, how they know such feeling in the sporting context, and how to deal with it so that it doesn’t harm him or interfere in the sporting performance. Ten athletes of mountain bike and canoeing participated of this study. The results were: a) situations or events that might make the feeling of fear appear: concerning the personal aspect, like lack of ability or technique, due to social judgment; concerning the environmental aspect, like a difficult track, a strong river rapid; concerning the competition aspects, like competitiveness, adversaries, doubt about the results, competition importance; b) the feeling of fear’s recognition by the students was achieved this way: afraid of falling, afraid to get hurt, afraid of down hills, afraid of being ran over, afraid of getting involved in an accident, afraid of losing, afraid of being misjudged, afraid of the unknown, afraid of dying, afraid of the track, afraid of the future, afraid of uncertainty, afraid of making a mistake, afraid of its result, afraid of not classifying, and afraid of not achieving a goal; c) when we analyze some kinds of emotion that the athletes feel, we find: positive affective states, like trust, motivation, enthusiasm, happiness and pleasure; and negative affective states, like loss of heart, solitude, disappointment, rage, nervousness, tension, apprehension, anxiety, fear, unreliability, and pressure; d) when we observed the definitions that athletes give to the feeling of fear, we noticed: something unknown, uncertainty, doubt, diffidence, physical fear, psychological fear, surviving instinct, unpleasant sensation, discomfort, state of great tension, apprehension toward difficulties, incapacity and unreliability; e) when we verified the strategies used to surpass the feeling of fear, we found: to remember good results achieved before, to concentrate positive thoughts, to increase the feeling of being able to do something, to avoid negative thoughts, to feel safe, to relax, to feel confident, to use techniques to relax, among other strategies. This way, we notice that fear is an emotion that is constantly present in the sporting context, receiving different representations and interpretations from society, as well as the great variety and complexity of the emotional states during sports practice, and it’s understood that, the greatest the demand and the level of performance needed by athletes, the greatest are the dynamics of these affective states and their influence on athletes performance.