Meanwhile in racquet sports upsets of ability are even more common. This could be that in a team, there is more chance that someone will be highly motivated and this, in turn, can motivate the rest of the team. However, in racquet sports the person has to bring the motivation from within and if the crowd is against them this can be very difficult. For example in the last 30 years, the male 1st seed has won Wimbledon just 12 times, and only twice has the title of Champion been contested by the top two seeds with the 1st seed coming out on top. Most notably it was the motivation of the unseeded wildcard Goran Ivanisevic winning in 2001, while in the women’s final of 2004 it was the 13th seed, Maria Sharapova, overcoming the ability of the 1st seed, Serena Williams, that show how motivation can triumph over ability. It could be also said that the lack of motivation on Miss Williams’ part led to her defeat as she had already won it the previous two years and was perhaps too over confident in her ability. This is shown in the inverted U theory in the appendix.
However the number of cases in which motivation overcomes ability in individual sports such as track events, swimming and boxing, are few and far between. In Athens last year the Americans ruled once more with athletes like Justin Gatlin and Shaw Crawford winning on the track, and Michael Phelps winning 6 golds, while just a few months ago no amount of motivation from Danny Williams could beat the sheer ability of Vitali Klitchko (see appendix). However, this being sport, it does happen. The Briton, Danny Williams, knocked Mike Tyson, former heavyweight champion of the world and a fighter of huge ability, to the canvas. With the bookies’ odds stacked against him, he had the motivation to beat Tyson. Meanwhile in the 110m Hurdles final in last year’s Olympic games, the young and unknown Liu Xang won gold. Not only did he win gold, he equalled Colin Jackson’s world record at the same time. Despite being a junior champion Xang had never won on a world stage before. In the appendix the inverted U theory shows how motivation helped Williams and Xang to victory against their opponents despite lower levels of ability.
Below is a diagram showing how an inverted U theory works. As you can see, as someone’s motivation or arousal levels increase, their performance increases too. However, just as too little motivation is bad, so is too much. Therefore teams or individuals with a lower level of ability as their opponents can sometimes be over aroused and therefore still lose despite being more motivated than their opponents. That is why if motivation were to be more important than ability the level of motivation would have to be at its most perfect for it to have any effect on the result.
However, while above is an example of an extrovert inverted U, there can also be such thing as an introvert (Described by Gross as the ‘Why of Behaviour’). (See appendix). Therefore this type of person can be motivated less, but still reach a high level of performance. However it does mean that their performance will decrease at a lower level of motivation than an extrovert.
Meanwhile there are the two circles of motivation. There is the ever improving circle and the ever-worsening circle.
Ever-Improving Circle Ever-Worsening Circle
While the ever improving circle show the team/athlete’s ability improving all the time, the worsening circle does the opposite. This could mean that someone with high levels of natural ability will gradually get worse as his self confidence leads to low motivation. Therefore someone with high levels of motivation can improve their ability to a point where they can beat the naturally gifted team/player. In this instance motivation is seen to be more important than ability.
In conclusion I feel that ability is much more important in successful competitive performances than motivation. Despite the fact that motivation can triumph over ability, more often than not it will be the other way around. Having the right level of motivation is too hit and miss. Say an athlete does have the perfect level of motivation, their opponent still has to have either a really low level or too much motivation for them to win, and that’s if they even have the perfect level of motivation. The physiological ‘fight or flight’ hypothesis means that people with lower abilities than their opponents can become nervous and therefore lead to ‘flight’ meaning low levels of motivation, and even if ‘fight’ occurs, they could arouse themselves too much and still have a low performance. It is much easier for the team or person with a higher ability to win as they have to be in a real physical or mental state to lose. Obviously it can happen as some of the examples in the appendix show, but overall ability conquers motivation. If I were going into a sporting competition tomorrow, I’d much rather have the confidence of supreme ability than the worry for the need of motivation.
Appendix
Miss M. Sharapova bt. Miss S. William – 6-1, 6-4
Vitali Klitchko bt. Danny Williams
1st Xiang Liu ---------------- 12.91
2nd Terrence Trammel ---- 13.18
Inverted U
Introvert and Extrovert
Bibliography
Advanced P.E for Edexcel
The Oxford English Dictionary
Sport Psychology by Karlene Sugarman
