Emotion regulation strategies used in the hour before running

Abstract

An online survey was used to explore emotion regulation strategies used by runners (N = 506, mean age = 37.69 years, SD = 8.84 years) in the hour prior to training or competition. Content analysis of responses identified 28 categories of emotion regulation strategy, with the most popular being goal setting (23%), distraction (12%), recall of past performance accomplishments (12%), and anticipated pleasant emotions after running (10%). Participants reported greater use of cognitive strategies than behavioural ones, with responses suggesting that emotion regulation and performance management are closely related. Given this cognitive focus, and given the performance aspect inherent to running, it is suggested that individuals' approaches to emotion regulation in sport and exercise contexts differ somewhat from those involved in general daily activities reported in the social psychology literature.

Keywords:

• emotion
• mood
• affect
• self-regulation
• psychological skills

Notes

Debate over distinctions between the related constructs of emotion, mood and affect has been a feature of the psychology and philosophy literatures for many years (see Beedie, Terry, & Lane, 2005). Given that no generally accepted criterion to distinguish between these three has been proposed, and given that the term “emotion” is arguably the most frequently used of the three in the description of human feeling states in both the scientific literature and in everyday life, in the present manuscript we use the word “emotion.” This is consistent with the approach adopted by a number of the authors from social psychology whose work is cited in the present manuscript. Although the term “affect” can refer to either emotions or moods, and might seem to be the more scientifically appropriate term of the three, it is not a word commonly used in everyday conversation by athletes, and therefore its adoption in a paper grounded in that everyday language seemed inappropriate. In fact, Dennett (1991) described the term “affect” as “the awkward term [for emotion] favoured by psychologists” (p. 45), whilst Gregory (1987) suggested that it is a word largely limited to use in academic psychology.