Some sort of idea?

Giving yesterday some thought, I think I have a bit of an idea of what happened.

Allow me to provide some background information. First off, I mentioned being in shock.

Second, in my Social Psychology class, we recently learned about an experiment conducted by Dutton & Aron in 1974. The experiment was about attributing arousal to what may cause it.

In the experiment, a good looking female confederate (experiment-helper) was told to ask questions and ask for a story from two groups of participants. At the end of the questionnaire, the experimenter would give her phone number out in case the subject was curious about results. This served a bit of a dual purpose - These men would now have this beautiful girls' number. It was also part of Dutton and Aron's measure.

One of the experimental groups of participants were questioned on a suspension bridge that was close to the ground, and very safe-looking.

The other bridge was the famed Capilano Suspension Bridge. This bridge is suspended a few hundred feet in the air, over a rushing river.

The Capilano Suspension Bridge. This doesn't quite do it justice though...


Looking down 70 meters from the Capilano (Four times scarier in person).

The main difference between these two groups is that the Capilano will have caused high anxiety, while the shorter bridge will have not.

What Dutton and Aron were interested is our attributions of this. Would those on the Capilano think that they had a racing heartbeat, clammy hands, and butterflies in their stomach because of the bridge, or the lady that had spoken to them?

They found that men on the Capilano called the number and described more romantic stories than those on the short bridge. The findings were significant.

Thinking about it now though, a potential confound in that experiment is that men who are more daring would go on the scarier bridge. I'm sure that this was not enough to compromise the study, though.

Now, in Sport Psychology, I had earlier learned about how athletes use arousal. In a nutshell, you can either let it get to you negatively (anxiety), or let it help your performance in the sort of "I'm ready for this" kind of way. I find I've always done the later.

Now what does the Capilano Suspension Bridge have to do with sport anxiety?

Well, think about it this way; What happens when you are in shock? For me, I become cold, lethargic, my hands get clammy, and my heart beat gets fast. Also, I get the feeling of a tinglyness on my skin.

I was certainly not in a great state of shock, as I shook the lethargy off pretty easily. Before the game, I gave it some thought, and decided to treat the shock as anxiety. In doing this, I demonstrated the mixing-up of attributions shown in the Capilano study, and also the use of arousal positively. Now, it might be a longshot, but I did have a pretty good game yesterday - Could this have been the reason? More importantly, am I on to something?

The most interesting thing about the mix-up though had to have been how the anxiety/shock subsided after the match completely. Normally it takes some time for shock to wear off, but anxiety departs normally when you're out of the situation that you attribute to being the cause of the anxiety.

Could I have turned the shock into a form of arousal, then gotten rid of it, just like arousal, at the end of the game? Could I have simply just worked my system back to equilibrium through the exercise? Maybe this requires some further research. I'm creating a new tag for certain posts for when I have to do my thesis in a couple years.