How do confidence and emotional control shape what a performer is willing to attempt?
Confidence and emotional control as features of the emotional factor: how positive emotions such as confidence and happiness affect willingness and decisiveness, the risk of over-confidence, and approaches used to build and steady confidence.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on confidence and emotional control as emotional factors, covering how positive emotions affect willingness and decisiveness, the risk of over-confidence, and the approaches used to build and regulate confidence.
Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed
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What this dot point is asking
The SQA wants you to explain confidence and emotional control: how positive emotions affect a performer, the risk of over-confidence, and how confidence is built and steadied. Higher questions often pair this with the development process, asking you to describe an approach to build confidence and explain its effect.
The answer
What confidence and happiness do
The positive impact of confidence
The risk of over-confidence
Approaches to building and steadying confidence
Examples in context
A gymnast preparing a new vault shows confidence and control. Built through progressive targets, practising the vault first into a pit, then with support, then fully, the gymnast gains evidence that the skill is safe, so confidence rises and they commit fully on competition day rather than holding back and under-rotating. But if that confidence tips into over-confidence and they skip the warm-up or attempt a harder variation unprepared, the lack of preparation undoes them. The same emotion that drives a committed, decisive vault can, uncontrolled, cause a careless one. Explaining how confidence changes the commitment to the skill, and how it is built and kept realistic, is what the SQA rewards in the emotional factor.
Try this
Q1. State what is meant by confidence in a performance. [1 mark]
- Cue. A performer's belief in their ability to succeed at a task.
Q2. Describe one approach to build confidence and explain how it could improve performance. [4 marks]
- Cue. Progressive realistic targets or mental rehearsal or thorough preparation; explain that the evidence of improvement builds belief, so the performer attempts skills decisively.
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 Higher 20204 marksExplain how confidence can have a positive impact on performance.Show worked answer →
A -mark explain question rewarding developed cause and effect.
Confidence is belief in your ability to succeed. A confident performer is willing to attempt skills and is decisive under pressure, so a netball shooter takes the shot rather than hesitating and passing it on.
Develop the impact: confidence keeps decision-making positive, encourages performers to take on attacking options and helps them recover after a mistake, which raises the chance of success. The marks come from the explained outcome.
SQA Higher 20226 marksDescribe one approach you used to build confidence and explain how it improved your performance.Show worked answer →
A -mark describe-and-explain question, half on the approach and half on the effect.
Describe an approach such as setting and achieving progressive, realistic targets in training, combined with positive self-talk and mental rehearsal of successful performance.
Explain the effect: each achieved target provides evidence of improvement that builds belief, so in competition you attempt skills decisively rather than playing safe, and you recover faster after errors. Marks come from the clear link between the approach and improved performance.
Related dot points
- The emotional factors that impact on performance, including their features such as anger, fear and anxiety, happiness and confidence, and the positive and negative effects emotions can have on a performer.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on the emotional factors impacting on performance, covering their main features (anger and aggression, fear and anxiety, happiness and confidence) and the positive and negative effects emotions can have on a performer.
- Managing anger, fear and anxiety as features of the emotional factor: how these emotions affect performance when uncontrolled, and the approaches used to manage them such as relaxation, breathing techniques, positive self-talk and routines.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on managing anger, fear and anxiety as emotional factors, covering how uncontrolled emotions damage performance and the approaches (relaxation, breathing, self-talk, routines) used to keep them at a helpful level.
- Mental toughness as a feature of the mental factor: staying focused, confident and composed under pressure, resilience and recovering from setbacks, and the approaches used to develop it such as mental rehearsal, positive self-talk and routines.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on mental toughness as a mental factor, covering composure and resilience under pressure, recovery from setbacks, and the approaches (mental rehearsal, positive self-talk, routines) used to develop it.
- Approaches to developing performance, including how a performer selects approaches that match the factor and the stage of learning, principles such as progression and specificity, and examples of approaches for the physical, mental, emotional and social factors.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on the approaches to developing performance, covering how to select approaches that match the factor and stage of learning, principles such as progression and specificity, and examples for each of the four factors.
- Evaluating performance development and identifying future development needs, including comparing results against the baseline and targets, judging the effectiveness of the approaches, and justifying decisions about what to develop next.
An SQA Higher Physical Education answer on evaluating performance development and identifying future development needs, covering comparison against the baseline and targets, judging the effectiveness of approaches, and justifying future development decisions.
Sources & how we know this
- SQA Higher Physical Education Course Specification — SQA (2019)