Duda identified three factors affecting motivation and used them to intrinsic motivation. The first is “to have mastery over a task”, which means to be well skilled and experienced. Second, is ego, “to display superiority” and thirdly to gain social approval, creating a sense of belonging.
Intrinsic motivational factors have a great affect on our performance in sport but external factors also play a major part in out levels of motivation and therefore how well we perform. External motivations are those factors that occur not inside of us, these factors could include rewards, medals or money, these sorts of motivation are called tangible rewards. Extrinsic motivation could also come from pressure from opponents or from piers.
The relationships between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation has been much debated amongst psychologists. Weinberg argues that “rewards do not inherently undermine intrinsic motivation.” However many would be against this statement and argue that the presence of tangible rewards overcome feeling of enjoyment fun and pride. Deci agrees with Weinberg. He presents two ways in which rewards increase intrinsic motivation. One way is that they make the performer responsible for his/her own progress. This means that if the performer wants to go on to high awards they must be well enough motivated intrinsically to take the next step themselves. The second way is rewards increase the performers feeling of competence, when a person feels competent, they feel confident and willing to carry on.
The intensity aspects of motivation are known as arousal. Our level of arousal is our level of motivation and psychological readiness. These levels can vary depending on our mood and our personality, people can be under aroused or over aroused, both affect our performance in a negative way. Our most performances come when we are at optimum arousal levels.
Over arousal is very detrimental to performance, in influences our abilities to think clearly which causes decisions to become erratic and generally poor. Over arousal is caused mostly by stress or high pressure, either from life or from the competition itself, for example being in a final causes great stress and put much pressure on performers. Classic examples of over arousal are John MnEnroe, a highly skilled tennis player but high levels of arousal caused him to have outbursts on court, affecting his concentration and overall performance. Jimmy White, another high quality performer, this time at tennis, high level of arousal made him miss shots he would not normally.
Under arousal can also affect arousal in massively negative ways. Being under aroused means you are generally very lowly motivated which creates a lack of effort being put into activity. Performers who are under aroused make poor decisions because they are into concerned with the outcome.
Drive theory is a concept developed by Hull in the early 1940’s describing the relationships between arousal and performance as linear. He believed that as arousal increased, so would performance and at the highest levels of arousal, the highest levels of performance would occur.
The ‘inverted U’ theory was developed by Yerkes and Dodson. According to their theory, as arousal levels increase so do performance, levels but only to a certain point. When arousal reaches this optimum point performance levels will reach their highest possible. After this optimum point, if arousal continues to increase, performance will begin to decrease.
Necessary levels of arousal are different in many situations, the optimum level depends on the type of activity, skill levels and personality of performer. If the activity is of a calm nature, with refined controlled movements involved, the optimum arousal levels will be fairly low because much concentration is needed. If a performer has low skill levels then most action performed will be done with conscious thought and therefore high motivation is needed to cope to avoid being anxious. The personality of a performer is very important when talking about optimum arousal levels. If a person is quiet and shy, known as an introvert, then they are more likely to perform best on low arousal conditions. Extroverts, loud, interested in contact active sports, will perform better under high arousal as they will be able to cope better with it.
Motivation in sport is very important in order to enhance performance. Both intrinsic and extrinsic factors give us a reason to perform and s drive to succeed which will also have a positive affect on performance. Arousal, linking to motivation is also very important if we want to enhance out performance. Reaching optimum levels in order to heighten will produce optimum results, and avoiding being under and over aroused is essential.
