Perceived effects of emotion intensity on athletic performance: a contingency-based individualized approach

This study, based on the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning model, examined the perceived effect of idiosyncratic emotions and bodily symptoms on athletic performance along the entire emotion-intensity range. The participants were 35 elite Italian athletes, 16 women and 19 men, competing in either figure skating or gymnastics. Idiosyncratic emotional descriptors were rated on Borg's CR-10 scale to estimate the perceived impact on performance and hedonic tone for each level of emotion-intensity range. The findings revealed a large interindividual variability in the content of emotions as well as in the shape of the curves representing the intensity-impact contingencies. At the group level, the emotion-performance link was positive linear for optimal-pleasant emotions, bell-shaped for optimal-unpleasant emotions, and negative linear for both dysfunctional-unpleasant and dysfunctional-pleasant emotions. The relationship between emotional and bodily symptom intensities was positive linear. Implications of the findings for estimating total functional effects and individualized interventions are suggested.