Emotions are fundamental to human adaptation to
life events and challenges and in regulating individuals’
interactions with others. In sport, the relationship
between emotion and performance has received substantial
research attention, with an initial interest on the
detrimental effects of precompetitive anxiety. Current
research has expanded to other pleasant and unpleasant
emotions, such as excitement, happiness, anger, and
dejection, and their adaptive and/or maladaptive effects
on performance and health in different human endeavors.
Emotion effects relate to sensory intake, stimuli
identification, decision making, memory, behavioral
response readiness, goal-oriented processes, and interpersonal
interactions.
Contemporary theoretical perspectives conceive emotions
as interrelated psychological processes wherein
affective, cognitive, motivational, physiological, and
relational components are central. In the biopsychosocial
model of challenge and threat, a challenge appraisal
is typified by high self-efficacy, perceived control,
and an approach focus (see Jones, Meijen, McCarthy,
& Sheffield, 2009). The performer experiences pleasant
functional emotions associated with higher cardiac output
and reduced total peripheral resistance, which are
conducive to improved decision making, cognitive
functioning, task engagement, and availability of energy
resources for task execution. Unpleasant emotions, such
as anxiety and anger, can also enhance readiness, motivation,
focus, and physical functioning, and therefore
be perceived as helpful when performers are in a challenge
state. Conversely, a threat state is characterized
by low self-efficacy, low perceived control, and avoidance
focus, in which unpleasant dysfunctional emotions
lead to decreased cognitive functioning, task disengagement,
and reduced availability of energy resources.
In the individual zones of optimal functioning (IZOF)
model (Hanin, 2007), the functional or dysfunctional
impact of a wide range of pleasant and unpleasant
emotion-related states depends on their content and
intensity resulting from the individual’s appraisals of
their interaction with the environment, own resources,
and capability to deal with situational demands. For
example, pleasant-functional (e.g., feeling energetic) or
unpleasant-functional states (e.g., angry) can help the
performer generate and use the energy to accomplish a
task, whereas unpleasant-dysfunctional (e.g., sluggish)
or pleasant-dysfunctional states (e.g., complacent) result
in lack or misuse of energy
