When I was studying Learning and Teaching in the Performing Arts at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, I undertook a project to learn about performance anxiety and investigate what strategies breakers can implement for controlling anxiety prior to competitions. This blog is part 2 of my literature review from that project.
Motivation and How it Affects Performance Anxiety
Nieminen et al (p 176 2001) discuss achievement motivation in regards to performance anxiety, commenting on the similarities of sport and dance disciplines, “Dance and sport share many common physical, psychological and social elements such as skills, strength, flexibility, achievement, self-confidence, competition and friendship.” They describe two types of motivation orientation in terms of how individuals perceive success and failure. Task-oriented individuals focus on acquiring and mastering skills, and feel successful when they focus on personal improvement and learning. Ego-oriented individuals focus on being the best and feel successful when outperforming others. These variations in motivation relate to behaviour and perceived competence, which in turn affect how performance anxiety is experienced.
Andrzejewski et al (2013) describe goal orientation theory in relation to dancers. In this theory, mastery-goal orientation is akin to task-orientation, where learning is viewed as valuable in itself, and gaining new skills and understanding is favoured. Performance-goal orientation is akin to ego-orientation, where learning is a means to outdo peers and focus is placed on demonstrating competence to others.
Lazaroff (2001) describes these orientations within the dance world as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the tendency to engage in an activity for enjoyment and feelings of accomplishment without an external reward, providing motivation for dancers to continue to invest effort in their training. Extrinsic motivation is the tendency to engage in an activity as a means to an end, where praise and positive feedback are the motivation.
Aoyagi (2013) states that athletes’ sense-of-self is at the core of intrinsic motivation. Any real or perceived threat to the sense-of-self will affect motivation which will in turn affect performance. He states that “Intrinsic motivation influences athletes’ belief in their ability, which affects their trust in this ability, determining the ability to be confident in the moment and switch into automatic processing…” (p 150, Aoyagi, 2013).
Carson and Collins (2016) define automaticity as attention being focused on high-order aspects of skill execution instead of movement components. This reduces the number of steps required to retrieve a skill from long-term memory. Performance anxiety causes the performer to focus on lower-order aspects, the step-by-step motions of skill execution, so automaticity is disrupted by anxiety. This conscious processing of a skill in a performance situation that can be executed automatically in a non-performance situation is referred to as self-focus theory. This theory posits that high pressure situations result in feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness and worry about performing well.
Hays et al (2009) discuss the importance of self-confidence in world class sports performance in terms of the Integrated Model of Sport Confidence (Vealey, 2001).They state that confident athletes are effective at using the necessary cognitive resources for a successful performance, they are task-diagnostic instead of self-diagnostic, looking for solutions to unforeseen problems rather than questioning their ability to deal with them. This belief in their ability allows them to peak under pressure and cope with adverse situations during competition. They also discuss perception of anxiety symptoms. Confident athletes perceive symptoms positively, as excitement, whereas athletes with low confidence perceive the same symptoms negatively, as worry, panic and fear. Athletes’ level of confidence is influenced by their thoughts, feelings and behaviours, which in turn affect their performance. Perhaps the higher the self-confidence, the more the individual can tune into automaticity.
Performance anxiety disrupts performance, hinders career advancement and threatens self-esteem, identity and confidence. Employing psychological skills to control it can improve all these factors. Setting goals, using imagery, meditation and mindfulness, maintaining motivation during training, increasing confidence and reducing feelings of isolation by talking to peers can all help to regulate negative thoughts, reducing performance anxiety and producing a more focused, confident individual. Changing focus and being able to perceive symptoms of anxiety as excitement rather than worry helps reduce fear. Adopting a mastery-goal orientation during training periods and switching to a performance-goal orientation during competitions would also be beneficial. These are all useful strategies that the field of breaking would benefit from.
References
Andrzejewski, C.E., Wilson, A. M., & Henry, D. J., (2013) Considering motivation, goals, and mastery orientation in dance technique, Research in Dance Education, 14:2, 162-175, DOI: 10.1080/14647893.2012.733364 https://doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2012.733364
Aoyagi, M. W., (2013) Teaching Theories of Performance Excellence to Sport & Performance Psychology Consultants-in-Training, Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 4:3, 139-151, DOI: 10.1080/21520704.2013.792895 https://doi.org/10.1080/21520704.2013.792895
Carson, H. J., & Collins, D., (2016) The fourth dimension: A motoric perspective on the anxiety–performance relationship, International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 9:1, 1-21, DOI: 10.1080/1750984X.2015.1072231 https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2015.1072231
Hays, K., Thomas, O., Maynard, I., & Bawden, M. (2009) The role of confidence in world-class sport performance, Journal of Sports Sciences, 27:11, 1185-1199, DOI: 10.1080/02640410903089798 https://doi.org/10.1080/02640410903089798
Lazaroff, E. M., (2001) Performance and Motivation in Dance Education, Arts Education Policy Review, 103:2, 23-29, DOI: 10.1080/10632910109600284 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10632910109600284
Nieminen, P., Varstala, V. & Manninen, M., (2001) Goal Orientation and Perceived Purposes of Dance Among Finnish Dance Students: A pilot study, Research in Dance Education, 2:2, 175-193, DOI: 10.1080/14647890120100791 https://doi.org/10.1080/14647890120100791
Vealey, R. S. (2001). Understanding and enhancing self-confidence in athletes. In R. N. Singer, H. A. Hausenblas, & C. M. Janelle (Eds.), Handbook of sport psychology (pp. 550–565). New York: Wiley.
