Performance increments without audience: paired data from mixed martial arts fighters during COVID-19

Abstract

<p>During COVID-19, athletes have been forced to compete in the absence of audience. Athletic and cognitive performance have been shown to be both incremented and decremented when competing either with or without audience, something that has been termed ‘social facilitation’. The current study sought to investigate this effect in a naturalistic experiment due to the current pandemic, in a sport in which the effect has never been examined; mixed martial arts (MMA). A performance variable was constructed, and data from 86 fighters who competed during COVID-19 were collected and compared to previous competition history. In total, 586 bouts were analyzed. Data distribution and assumptions were explored in which non-normal distribution was found. Subsequently, a test of marginal homogeneity and a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test were performed. The results showed that MMA fighters who won their bout without audience displayed poorer performance’s in previous bouts, which were attended by audience. The current study further explores the notion of social facilitation effects and suggests there may be a need to pro-actively incorporate training alternatives that could mitigate performance decrements in fighters who are prone to negative effects due to external stimuli, such as an audience. However, due to the limited observations in the non-audience condition the study results should be interpreted cautiously and considered highly preliminary.</p><p align="center"><strong> </strong></p>

A Systematic Review of the Sport Psychology Mixed Martial Arts Literature: Replication and Extension

“…Table 1 includes the 16 [ 13 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ] studies meeting our inclusion criteria. The studies spanned from 2011 to 2021, with 795 MMA participants (n mean = 49.68 ± 63.65, range 3 to 215) with data coming from North America (USA, n = 7), South America (Brazil, n = 4), and one study each from five European countries (Czechia, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom).…”

“…One study [ 29 ] included two large samples (n = 618; n = 278) of non-MMA participants (approximately 65% females) as raters of the MMA participants. Of the eight articles not found in the Andrade et al (2020) review, five [ 13 , 26 , 28 , 29 , 33 ] articles were found within their search timeframe and three [ 23 , 27 , 35 ] beyond their search timeframe.…”

“…Given MMA research is not the level of clinical based research with random selection and the like, the subject selection procedures overall seemed adequate, especially with the number of professional including UFC athletes as participants. Hence, for our second bias category concerned with the sample’s MMA background, the vast majority (n = 13) we rated from no (n = 4) [ 23 , 29 , 34 , 35 ] to low (n = 3) [ 22 , 24 , 30 ] to some (n = 6) [ 25 , 27 , 28 , 31 , 32 , 33 ] concern. Though it is not a requirement to state participant anonymity assured, it seems relevant.…”

“…Most likely, researchers assured anonymity within their human subject participant forms. However, only three studies [ 23 , 29 , 35 ] specially wrote anonymity assured in their method section. Concerning data collection, most studies (n = 12) collected their data directly from their participants.…”

“…Many studies [22,[25][26][27][28][29] were cross-sectional, though a few [24,30] spanned at least a month. The Blomqvist Mickelsson and Shaw's [23] study utilized archival data over a three-year period. Concerning result interpretation (see Table 4), we sought to report effect size values, author reported or calculated or interpreted (e.g., reported correlations) by us.…”