Over the years, researchers have tried to develop scales to attempt to measure ‘motivation’ in terms of a numerical degree. Tutko and Richards developed a motivation rating scale in 1972 that is still used in contemporary times. This scale identifies eleven traits which contribute to the motivation of many athletes around the world, such as Aggression, Coachability, Emotional control, Mental toughness, Drive, Self confidence, Determination, Leadership, Responsibility, Trust and Conscientiousness. Other researchers, such as Kenyon, have constructed a physical activity inventory that identifies and attempts to measure why sportspeople take part in physical activity. These include Social, Health and Fitness, Vertigo, Aesthetic, Acetic and Chance factors, which influence and drive a sportsperson to achieve their goals. However, another set of researchers, Alderman and Wood, define these factors as Affiliation, Aggression, Excellence, Independence, Power, Stress and Success. Although these two research projects were written with less than a decade in difference, the features that are reasons are quite distinctive. One focuses more on the environment of the athlete; the second is centered on the attributes, both mental and physical, of the athlete himself.
A major part of an athlete’s maximum motivation levels rest on other points, too. The athlete’s coach needs to manipulate the athlete’s level of motivation in order to maximise the athlete’s performance. The relationship between motivation and performance is very similar to the relationship between arousal of energy and performance. This is because the performer who is highly motivated is also very highly aroused. This is explained by two theories, Hull’s Drive theory the Yerkes Dodson Law.
Hull’s drive theory states that:
Performance = Habit x Drive
Where habit refers to the strength of the learned response or skill, or whether the correct response has been practised until it has become a habit. Any response can have a strong or weak habit, depending on the level of practise that the athlete carries out at that skill. Drive refers to the level of arousal of the performer. Increased levels of arousal are said to bring about the dominant response, which is defined as the strongest number of possibilities of success. While learning, this dominant response is usually incorrect as the athlete is still prone to mistakes. When the skill has been fully learned, the dominant response is usually correct, as it is now a part of the habit of the athlete or performer. It follows, then, that until the skill has been well learned, any increase in arousal will probably result in an increase in performance. Once a skill is fully learned, though, an increase in arousal will most probably bring about an increase in performance.
Yerkes Dodson Law, on the other hand, asserts that performance increases with arousal but only up to a point, where highly increased levels of arousal will bring about a decreased level of performance. This said a certain level of arousal is obviously needed to perform to a certain height of skill. The Yerkes Dodson Law states that too much arousal, though, makes the performer tense, overanxious and more liable to make mistakes.
The optimum levels or arousal is dependent on a number of factors including the difficulty of the task at hand, the level of learning and individual differences. For simpler skills, the learner will need to be more aroused than for more complex skills. If the task is simple, it is easy for the student to become disinterested, and therefore higher levels of arousal will ensure greater concentration. Complex skills, however, require large amounts of attentional capacity and so need lower levels of arousal. Excessive arousal can cause frustration and narrowing of attentional focus, otherwise known as tunnel vision. The learner will be concentrating so hard of trying to learn, they will hinder the whole learning process, leading to a detriment in performance.
High levels of arousal, for skills such as snooker, otherwise known as fine motor skills, can be detrimental to performance, due to unwanted increases in muscle tension. Gross motor skills in the other hand need a higher level of arousal. This includes hazardous activities such as rock climbing. Arousal in early stage of learning needs to be low compared to the arousing levels in a lesson needs to be large. This is because arousal leads to a smaller span of attention, which is needed to grasp the information taught. Whereas, in later stages, arousal is needed more so that it can motivate the performer.
Atkinson says that “whenever a person is faced with a task, the decision to reject the task is based on both personality and situational factors”. The personality factor in this case is the motive to succeed or the motive to avoid failure. In any challenge the person would think and either the motive to succeed and/or the motive to avoid failure. The high achievers think more about the motive to succeed and the low achievers think more about the motive to avoid failure. The situational factors that changes the person’s motivation is the incentive value of success and the incentive value of failure. The incentive value is how much the person thinks he/she will get out of the assignment given.
All these factors represent the role of motivation in the enhancement of sporting performance. Motivation is a very important and critical aspect of a successful performance in any activity, but, essentially, is one of the major reasons for accomplishment in the modern sports realm. In conclusion, motivation plays a key role in enhancing sports, through mental, psychological, physical and emotional methods, and remains today a very well known and widely used method of attaining distant goals.