How do emotions affect performance, and how can a performer manage them under pressure?
Emotional factors impacting on performance: managing anger and aggression, fear and apprehension, happiness, sadness and frustration, resilience, and the approaches used to regulate them.
An SQA Advanced Higher Physical Education answer on emotional factors, covering anger and aggression, fear and apprehension, happiness, sadness and frustration, resilience, and the approaches a performer uses to regulate emotions, with worked exam-style answers.
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What this part of the course is asking
Emotional factors are the feelings a performer experiences before, during and after performance and the way those feelings are managed. Advanced Higher asks you to explain how anger, fear, happiness, sadness, frustration and resilience affect performance, both positively and negatively, and which approaches help a performer regulate them. Emotions overlap with mental factors (a strong emotion raises arousal and disrupts concentration), so a good answer keeps the two groups distinct while showing how they interact.
Anger and aggression
A small, controlled increase in anger can briefly raise drive, but uncontrolled anger is overwhelmingly negative: attention locks onto the trigger, arousal climbs past the optimum, decision-making suffers, and the performer may commit fouls or reckless acts that cost penalties and damage relationships with teammates and officials.
Fear and apprehension
Happiness, sadness and frustration
Resilience
Resilience is decisive in high-level sport because setbacks are guaranteed. The performer who recovers from a lost point or a poor result returns to their normal standard quickly, while one who dwells on errors lets a single mistake snowball, so resilience underpins consistency across a long performance or season.
Approaches to regulating emotions
Try this
Q1. State one negative effect of fear on a performer attempting a difficult skill. [1 mark]
- Cue. Hesitation or over-caution, so the performer holds back and does not commit to the action.
Q2. Explain why resilience helps a performer maintain consistency across a long competition. [2 marks]
- Cue. It lets them recover quickly from setbacks and mistakes, protecting confidence and focus so one error does not snowball into several.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of SQA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
SQA AH style6 marksExplain how poor management of anger can have a negative impact on performance, and describe an approach to control it.Show worked answer →
A 6-mark answer needs the negative impacts of uncontrolled anger and a controlling approach explained.
Uncontrolled anger narrows attention onto the source of frustration rather than the task, raises arousal beyond the optimum and disrupts decision-making, so the performer rushes, takes poor options and makes errors. It can also trigger hostile, foul or reckless actions that concede penalties, cards or position, and it damages relationships with teammates and officials, harming team cohesion.
A controlling approach is a refocusing routine combined with controlled breathing: when the performer notices anger rising, a cue word ("next point") and slow breaths lower arousal and shift attention back to the immediate task. Cognitive restructuring also helps by reframing the trigger (a bad decision by the referee) as something outside the performer's control. Markers reward the attentional, arousal and behavioural impacts plus one approach described in enough detail to show how it reduces the emotion.
SQA AH style4 marksExplain what is meant by resilience and why it is important for a high-level performer.Show worked answer →
A 4-mark answer needs resilience defined and its importance justified.
Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from setbacks, mistakes, defeats or injury, and to keep striving towards goals despite adversity. A resilient performer treats a setback as temporary and specific rather than permanent and personal.
It matters because high-level sport guarantees setbacks: lost points, poor results, criticism and injury. A performer who recovers quickly maintains confidence and concentration and returns to their normal standard, while one who dwells on errors lets one mistake become several. Resilience therefore protects consistency over a long performance or season. Markers reward a clear definition and a justified reason linked to consistency or recovery.
Related dot points
- Mental factors impacting on performance: level of arousal and the inverted-U, anxiety (cognitive and somatic), concentration and attention, decision-making, mental toughness, and the approaches used to develop them.
An SQA Advanced Higher Physical Education answer on mental factors, covering level of arousal and the inverted-U, cognitive and somatic anxiety, concentration and attentional focus, decision-making, mental toughness, and the approaches used to develop each, with worked exam-style answers.
- Social factors impacting on performance: group and team dynamics, cooperation and competition, roles and responsibilities, group cohesion (task and social) and its development, and the influence of others on performance.
An SQA Advanced Higher Physical Education answer on social factors, covering group and team dynamics, cooperation and competition, roles and responsibilities, task and social cohesion and how to develop it, and the influence of others on performance, with worked exam-style answers.
- Physical factors impacting on performance: physical and skill-related fitness, skill level and skill classification, tactics and composition, and how these sub-factors interact within a performance.
An SQA Advanced Higher Physical Education answer on physical factors, covering physical and skill-related fitness, skill level and classification, tactics and composition, and how these sub-factors interact to determine performance, with worked exam-style answers.
- Methods of collecting information on factors impacting performance: qualitative and quantitative methods, observation schedules and video analysis, questionnaires and self-report inventories, standardised fitness tests, comparison with a model performer, and the reliability and validity of data.
An SQA Advanced Higher Physical Education answer on collecting information about factors impacting performance, covering qualitative and quantitative methods, observation schedules and video analysis, questionnaires and self-report inventories, standardised fitness tests, comparison with a model performer, and the reliability and validity of data, with worked exam-style answers.
- Analysing and developing performance: the cyclical analysis process, setting goals from data, principles of effective practice, methods and models of practice, principles of training, and monitoring and evaluating development.
An SQA Advanced Higher Physical Education answer on analysing and developing performance, covering the cyclical analysis process, setting goals from data, the principles of effective practice, methods and models of practice, principles of training, and monitoring and evaluating development, with worked exam-style answers.