An exploration of the two-factor schematization of relation meaning and emotions among professional rugby union players

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to explore Lazarus's two-factor schematization of losses and gains and the emotions generated in response to loss (threat and harm) and gain (challenge and benefit) relational meanings. Participants were 10 professional rugby union players aged between 24 and 35 years (M age ¼ 26.8 years, SD ¼ 5.92). The results revealed that at different times, the same stressor had different relational meanings. For instance, opponent, coach, playing an important match, and injury stressors were appraised as losses and gains. Furthermore, stressful loss relational meanings generated pre-dominantly negative emotions, whereas gain relational meanings generated mainly positive emotions. However, anxiety was the second most reported emotion generated in response to gain relational meanings. This finding suggests that not all gain relational meanings generate positively toned emotions.

Precompetitive Achievement Goals, Stress Appraisals, Emotions, and Coping Among Athletes

“…From an applied perspective, these findings have important implications. Teaching athletes to generate positive appraisals may lead to more positive emotions being experienced (see Nicholls et al, 2011), which may result in more task-oriented coping strategies being deployed. This may be beneficial to performance given that taskoriented coping was found associated with better performances among golfers (Gaudreau, Nicholls, & Levy, 2010).…”

“…With a sample of 11 professional rugby union players, Nicholls et al (2011) found that gain (i.e., challenge and benefit) appraisals were associated with pleasant emotions, whereas loss (i.e., harm/loss and threat) appraisals were associated with unpleasant emotions. This finding was also replicated with a sample of 557 athletes.…”

Changes in cognition over a 16.1 km cycling time trial using Think Aloud protocol: Preliminary evidence

“…For example, the perceptions of stressors could result in certain verbalisations being more evident in earlier stages. The perceived importance of the event may have contributed to these findings (Nicholls et al, 2011); given that this was a real-life TT event, it could be suggested that this was perceived as more important than other training events or a laboratory-based study. The initial verbalisations could be the result of a stress response, however as the TT progresses, participants may employ specific coping strategies and develop perceptions of control over the event (Billat et al, 2001).…”

Adaptação Humana ao Stress em Contextos Desportivos: Teoria, Avaliação, Investigação e Intervenção

“…Apesar de parecer óbvia esta necessidade, a verdade é que conseguir integrar todas as dimensões envolvidas nesta relação num único estudo é uma tarefa difícil e complexa. É, por isso, que quando analisamos grande parte dos estudos efetuados sobre este tópico no domínio desportivo e que têm por base a proposta transacional de Lazarus, constatamos que tendem a estudar este fenómeno de um modo parcelar, ora focando-se nos fatores de stress (Campbell & Jones, 2002;Fletcher, & Hanton, 2003;McKay, Niven, Lavallee, & White, 2008;Noblet & Gifford, 2002), nos processos de avaliação cognitiva (Balk, Adriaanse, de Ridder, & Evers, 2013;Nicholls, 2007;Nicholls, Polman, Morley, & Taylor, 2009) ou nas emoções resultantes (Nicholls, Levy, Jones, Rengamani, & Polman, 2011;Rathschlag & Memmert, 2015), existindo menos estudos centrados na relação interativa entre todos eles (Nicholls, Perry, & Calmeiro, 2014).…”

“…Este aspeto é tanto mais relevante quando pensamos no desporto, uma vez que se trata de um contexto potencialmente promotor de elevada pressão e stress nos atletas (Balk et al, 2013;Nicholls et al, 2011). Por isso, a questão que se coloca é como é que as abordagens transacional e interativa expostas neste trabalho podem ajudar o psicólogo do desporto a intervir nestes casos.…”