Abstract
The main objective of this chapter was to examine whether the sporting experience determines the emotional experience of the participants when playing competitive sports games. Seventy-three students (51 boys and 22 girls) of the 2nd year of the Degree in Physical Activity and Sport Sciences of the Catholic University San Antonio of Murcia (UCAM) participated in the study. To identify the emotional intensity experienced by the participants, the Games and Emotion Scale (GES) was used, and the generalized estimating equations test (GEE) and classification trees (CHAID method) were chosen to analyze the data obtained. The results showed that participants with previous physical-sports experience experienced emotions more intensely than participants with no previous experience. The conclusion drawn was that the physical-sports experience determines the optimal emotional experience of the students.
TopEmotional Experience And Physical-Sports Experience
There are numerous studies that show that emotional experience also depends on previous physical-sports experiences. Based on this, players with a sports background experience negative emotions with less intensity than players with no previous physical-sports experiences and also less intensity in states of tension and anxiety when performing introjective motor practices (Rovira, López, Lagardera et al., 2014), “which illustrates that the practice of physical exercise can favorably influence emotional self-regulation” (p. 120). Attending to the age of the participants, it can be noted that adolescents (high school students) score psychomotor games with lower emotional intensity and sociomotor games with higher emotional intensity (Duran et al., 2014). These authors not only reach this conclusion, but also obtain another great finding referred to the presence of adversaries, since after knowing the results of their study they affirm that opposition and cooperation-opposition games increase the intensity of negative emotions. According to Duran et al. (2014) the three types of socio-motor games generate similar positive emotional intensities, but with regard to negative emotions, only the adversarial games have a greater emotional experience. This fact, according to Sáez de Ocáriz et al. (2013) and Alonso, Lavega et al. (2013), may be due to the conflicts generated when an opponent tries to stop the achievement of the objective or goal of the game.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Motor Behavior: Refer to personalized motor actions, in which organic, cognitive, relational, and emotional processes are considered in a unitary way.
Oppositional Motor Situations: The player opposes another player. Both pursue different motor goals. There is motor interaction against at least one opponent. In turn, the opposition can be physical or material.
Sport Game: Codified motor situation, with rules, of a competitive nature and which may or may not be institutionalized.
Praxilogy of Motor Skills: Science of motor action. It analyzes mechanisms of functioning resulting from any motor practice (game, sport, expressive practice, etc.) and thanks to the internal logic it is possible to decipher these mechanisms, i.e., the relationships between players, space, time, and material that emerge from the type of motor domain.
Sports History: Previous physical-sports experience.
Flow: A state that is achieved when the task or challenge to be overcome is interesting for the person who performs it and has nothing to do with other external objectives.
Emotion: A complex state of the organism characterized by an excitation or disturbance that predisposes to an organized response.