JOURNAL OF SPORT PSYCHOLOGY, 1986.8, 112-123

Physical Performance and Self-Efficacy Under Happy and Sad Moods

David Kavanagh University of Sydney

Steven Hausfeld Macquarie University

Previous research has established that happy and sad moods can affect per- sistence and success on a cognitive task, with happiness leading to higher performance and self-efficacy. Two experiments examined whether happi- ness also produces increased performance on a physical task and tested whether self-efficacy mediated the results. When mood inductions covered the full range from happy to sad, mood did influence physical performance. However, evidence regarding self-efficacy was equivocal. Efficacy for the performed task was unaffected by mood, although it remained a good predictor of per- formance. Since mood did alter efficacy for a nonperformed but more familiar task, inconsistent efficacy results could reflect task differences. The find- ings offer prospects for the use of mood inductions in practical sporting situ- ations.

Coaches in a range of sports have attempted to improve performances by "psyching up" the participants. Recent research has focused on the effective- ness of various mental preparation strategies (e.g., Gould, Weinberg, & Jack- son, 1980; Lan & Gill, 1984; Lee, 1982; Shelton & Mahoney, 1978; Weinberg, Gould, & Jackson, 1980; Wilkes & Summers, 1984). Two methods have had particular success: using suggestions of high self-efficacy (Wilkes & Summers, 1984) and increasing physical and emotional arousal (Gould et al., 1980; Wilkes & Summers, 1984).

Evidence from other kinds of activities confirms a relationship between mood and performance, especially when people have substantial control over their participation. For example, Kavanagh (1985) induced a sad, neutral, or happy mood in college students and presented them with an anagrams task, allowing them to choose how long they would continue in their solution attempts. Happy

Requests for reprints should be sent to David Kavanagh, Dept. of Psychology, University of Sydney, NSW 2006 Australia. Steven Hausfeld is now at the Office of Com- monwealth Ombudsman, Canberra.

112

Happy and Sad Moods / 113

subjects persisted longer at this cognitive task and were more successful than sad subjects. Since mood affects sustained mental effort, it may also affect physical effort or performance. There is evidence from other studies showing theoretical parallels between mental and physical tasks (e.g., Bandura, 1982; Locke, Shaw, Saari, & Latharn, 198 1; McAuley, Russell, & Gross, 1983). Weinberg, Gould, and Jackson's (1980) fmding of a psyching-up effect on performance of a strength task offers some further support. If physical tasks are affected by mood, then there is a potential behavioral technology based on mood manipulation. Careful alteration of an athlete's mood might help in optimizing sport performance.

What mechanism might be responsible for such an effect? One possibility is that mood alters what people think they can achieve. Since Bandura (1977) introduced the concept of self-efficacy, it has been demonstrated to be a deter- minant of performance in a wide range of task domains (Bandura, 1982). In the sporting area a number of studies have found that self-efficacy and related con- cepts are strong predictors of achievement (Barling & Abel, 1983; Feltz & Brown, 1984; Feltz, Landers, & Raeder, 1979; Gould & Weiss, 1981) and support it assuming a causal role in skill acquisition (Feltz, 1982; Feltz & Mungo, 1983). Manipulations of self-efficacy by modeling procedures (Feltz et al., 1979) or through information about a competitor's competence (Weinberg, Gould, & Jack- son, 1979; Weinberg, Yukelson, & Jackson, 1980) produce powerful changes in performance.

A mediational role for self-efficacy in the moodlperformance effect is supported by efficacy-induced changes in persistence and effort (Brown & In- ouye, 1978; Weinberg et al., 1979; Weinberg, Yukelson, & Jackson, 1980), the very performance variables in question. In addition, Kavanagh and Bower (1985) observed changes in self-efficacy across a wide range of task domains in re- sponse to happy and sad mood inductions. While Kavanagh (1985) failed to confirm this finding on a cognitive task, correlations between self-efficacy and persistence were significant, although moderate in size. The results suggested that the relationship between mood, self-efficacy, and performance should be fur- ther explored.

This paper presents two studies that examine whether mood alters self- efficacy and effort on a test of handgrip strength. Experiment 1 represents a preliminary attempt to examine this by contrasting effects of happiness against a neutral mood or no mood induction. Happy versus neutral was chosen because it reflected naturalistic situations, in which one might try to improve a person's sporting performance by boosting his or her mood. Although this proved to be a somewhat weak mood manipulation, the experiment is reported in full because it was the foundation for Experiment 2.

Experiment 1-Method

Subjects and Design

Fifty-one introductory behavioral science undergraduates from Macquarie University or the University of Sydney (20 men and 31 women) participated to fulfill course requirements. The design was a 2 (sexes) by 3 (treatments) factori- al design with repeated measures across treatments. The treatments involved in-

114 / Kavanagh and Hausfeld

duction of a happy mood (Happy), induction of a neutral mood (Neutral), and no mood induction (None). Subjects attended three experimental sessions a week apart to avoid carry-over effects between sessions. Each was tested alone to minimize the influence of potential social factors.

Procedure

After a brief introduction to the procedures, subjects signed a consent form and completed a practice efficacy measure. For this, they rated their confidence in being able to lift suitcases of 16 different weights ranging from 5 kg (11 lb) to 80 kg (176 lb). Ratings for this and subsequent efficacy measures ranged from 0, "Certain can't do it," through 50 "Uncertain," to 100 "Certain can do it." Subjects could use any numbers in that range.

Next, subjects underwent the mood induction for their first treatment. Those in the Happy and Neutral conditions listened to a 13-minute audiotape, while those in the None condition proceeded directly to the dependent measures. The first half of the tapes involved a relaxation induction procedure and the se- cond half asked subjects to visualize a scene. During the Neutral tape subjects imagined cleaning their teeth, while for the Happy tape they visualized winning $10,000 from a lottery. A fortuitous happy event was used to avoid any possibil- ity of generalization from an imagined success to the efficacy measures.

After the mood induction, subjects were shown the Takeikiki Kogyo Grip Dynamometer; they completed a handgrip self-efficacy scale, similar to the practice efficacy scale. They next completed a mood rating scale and began the handgrip performance task. These procedures were repeated on the second and third ses- sions, except that the practice rating was omitted.

For the handgrip efficacy scale, subjects rated their degree of confidence that they could exert each of 18 forces from 12kg to 63kg using their nonpreferred hand. To help subjects interpret the kg-force scale, the averages for men and for women were indicated. These averages (24 kg for women and 42 kg for men) had been established in pilot work with another 35 subjects. The self-efficacy level was defined as the interpolated kg-force corresponding to subjects' 75 % confidence rating. This represented the level that subjects felt at least moderately confident of reaching. Results were also examined at the 51 % level, the first meas- urable level at which a subject changed from being uncertain to believing that he or she could exert the designated force. Since there were no important differ- ences between the results at the two levels of confidence, only the 75% results are reported here. For correlational analyses, total strength of self-efficacy was also computed. This was the average of the confidence ratings subjects made to the 18 forces and represents an estimate of efficacy strength throughout the en- tire range.

This procedure for measuring self-efficacy differs slightly from the method typically used by Bandura (1977, 1982), in which subjects check whether they can perform a task and only judge their confidence for the items they have marked positively. The present method retains the intention of the original scales in a format that subjects report is simpler and that provides a single continuous scale of confidence. It allows subjects not only to record their confidence in perform-

Happy and Sad Moods 1 115

ing the task, but also to record their confidence in the judgment they cannot per- form the task, a rating precluded by the typical scales.'

The mood scale contained 7-point ratings (0 to 6), five for positive adjec- tives (pleased, elated, cheerful, light-hearted, carefree) and five for negative ad- jectives (sad, hopeless, unhappy, depressed, blue). These were listed in the same random order for all subjects and all treatments. The mood score was the sum of the five positive ratings minus the sum of the five negative ratings. These scores could range from - 30 (an extremely negative mood) to + 30 (an extremely posi- tive mood). Previous studies had established that the scale has item consistency of at least .92 using coefficient alpha (Kavanagh, 1985; Miller & Kavanagh, 1985). It is sensitive to emotional changes after mood inductions (Kavanagh, 1985) and after success or failure (Miller & Kavanagh, 1985), and it can significantly dis- criminate between depressed and nondepressed students (Miller & Kavanagh, 1985).

To measure handgrip performance, subjects squeezed the dynamometer as hard as they could, having adjusted it for their hand size. They were told they could have as many attempts as they wished but that only their best performance would count. Subjects received no feedback on these handgrips until after they had completed the experiment. At the end of each session, subjects were debriefed to ensure that they suffered no ill effects from the relaxation and mood induc- tion. In fact, most subjects enjoyed the experiment.

Results

Manipulation Checks

To ensure that the design was counterbalanced across order of moods, we excluded 2 men and 1 woman who showed the least mood reaction to the tapes within their order and sex. On average, these subjects had a mood score of 6.3 after the Neutral recording, while after the Happy recording their mood score was lower, at -1.3. This left a final sample of 18 men and 30 women (3 men and 5 women in each of the 6 mood orders).

Analyses used planned orthogonal contrasts in a repeated measures analysis of variance (Poor, 1973). For subjects in the final sample, Happy mood scores (M = 14.3) were significantly higher than the average of the Neutral and None (M = 10.1 and9.1, respectively), F(l, 46) = 9.81,p< .01, whilethesecontrol conditions did not differ significantly, F(l, 46) < 1. There was no significant main effect for gender, F(l, 46) < 1, or interaction of gender with the contrasts, F(l, 46) < 1 and F(1, 46) = 2.81, n.s.

'In line with Bandura's intention that the confidence scale represents a probability judgment, he assumes that saying a task cannot be performed is equivalent to zero confi- dence. This is not supported by subjects' comments at debriefing. Instead many subjects appear to make an idiosyncratic cutoff at intermediate confidence levels.

116 / Kavanagh and Hausfeld

Handgrip Self-Eficacy and Pelfomuznce

Despite this confirmation of the mood manipulation, mood had no sig- nificant impact on handgrip self-efficacy. Happy mood resulted in efficacy equal to the average of Neutral and None (M = 31.8, 30.9, and 31.7, respectively), F(l, 46) < 1, and the control conditions did not differ significantly from each other, F(l, 46) < 1. Although, reflecting their greater strength, men had signifi- cantly higher efficacy levels than women, F(l, 46) = 43.36, p < ,0001, there were no significant interactions between gender and the mood contrasts, F(l, 46) = 2.17, n.s., and F(l, 46) < 1, respectively.

Mood also had little impact on maximum handgrip performance. Subjects in the Happy condition (M = 28.1) obtained scores equal to the average of Neu- tral and None (M = 27.5 and 28.1, respectively), F(l, 46) = 1.06, n.s., and the two control conditions did not differ, F(l, 46) = 1.39, n.s. Men had signifi- cantly stronger handgrip scores, F(l, 46) = 172.5 1, p < .0001, but there was no gender interaction with the mood contrasts, F < 1 in each case.

Correlations Between Eficacy and Pelfomuznce

As in other studies (see Bandura, 1982), strength of self-efficacy corre- lated highly with performance. Although the handgrip task was new to most sub- jects and no feedback was given during the experiment, their total efficacy rat- ings on average predicted 42 % of the variance in their performance. Correlations ranged from .61, p < .001, in the Happy condition through .64, p < .001, (None), to .70, p < .001, (Neutral). This is consistent with self-efficacy being a predictor of physical and sporting performance (Bandura, 1977, 1982; Barling & Abel, 1983; Feltz et al., 1979; Weinberg et al., 1979, 1980). It also demonstrates the resilience of the self-efficacy concept to minor changes in the measurement scale.

Discussion

While the results of Experiment 1 were consistent with efficacy theory, they offered little evidence that positive emotions can usefully boost performance on a physical task. Before accepting this conclusion, however, it is worth con- sidering that, even with three of the low responders omitted, the difference be- tween Happy and Neutral moods was only 4 points on the 61-point scale, while Kavanagh (1985) reported that over 20 points separated his contrasting mood con- ditions. One explanation for the relatively poor mood response was that the time lapse of 1 week allowed extra-experimental changes to impinge on moods. The mood inductions were therefore tried again on a new sample of students with only 2 days between sessions. Mood scores were similar (Happy M = 14.2, Neu- tral M = 11.9, None M = 9.9), and the comparison of Happy with the two con- trol conditions did not reach significance, F(1, 16) = 4.07, p > .05. Apparently a stronger manipulation of mood was required.

Experiment 2 was undertaken to maximize the impact of the mood induc- tions by extending their range from happy to sad (cf. Kavanagh, 1985) and by tailoring the mood inductions to individual subjects. Since there was no signifi-

Happy and Sad Moods I 117

cant difference between the Neutral and None conditions in Experiment 1, the Neutral condition was omitted. This limited the number of conditions required and enhanced the ecological validity of the experiment, since absence of manipu- lation is the appropriate control in a sporting context. In addition, the experimenter who administered the dependent measures in Experiment 2 remained blind to the subject's treatment. To increase the generality of our results, we also added an efficacy measure concerning a second physical task: the number of push-ups people thought they could do. This second activity was more likely to be familiar to sub- jects and it added a component of sustained effort or persistence that was closer to the task requirements of the earlier study of mood and anagram solution by Kavanagh (1985). No performance test was obtained for push-ups because of pos- sible confounding with the handgrip attempts. Other aspects of Experiment 1 were retained in Experiment 2.

Experiment 2-Method

Subjects and Design

Twelve men and 24 women from an introductory course in psychology at the University of Sydney participated to fulfull a course requirement. Each ex- perienced three conditions: induced happiness (Happy), induced sadness (Sad), and no induction (None). Two men and four women were randomly allocated to each of the six possible orders of treatments, coming individually to sessions 1 week apart.

Procedure

Subjects were met by the first experimenter, who gave preliminary in- structions and obtained consent as in Experiment 1. After the practice efficacy scale, subjects in the None treatment proceeded directly to the second ex- perimenter, who administered the efficacy and performance measures. Those al- located to the mood inductions selected a real or hypothetical experience that would create a happy or sad emotion that they could imagine vividly. The experimenter asked the subject to describe the situation in general terms to ascertain that there was no element of success or failure involved. If necessary, he asked for alterna- tive experiences until this criterion was met. Happy situations chosen included going to a good rock concert, being with a boyfriend or girlfriend, and enjoying an overseas vacation. Some sad situations were death of a grandparent, the loss of a childhood pet, and the divorce of one's parents. As in Experiment 1, mood induction was via audiotapes that subjects heard while alone. The tapes lasted approximately 7 minutes. They began with brief relaxation instructions leading to a request that subjects imagine their chosen situation as vividly as they could. Transcripts of the tapes are in the Appendix.

Following this mood induction, the second experimenter, unaware of their mood state, asked the subjects to complete the remaining measures. The first of these was the handgrip efficacy scale, an efficacy scale regarding how many push-ups subjects could do without stopping (using 18 levels from 2 to 60 push-

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Happy and Sad Moods 1 119

34) = 1.18, n.s. Nor did the None condition differ significantly from the mean of the other two conditions, F(l, 34) < 1. Although, reflecting their greater average strength, men scored higher than women, F(l, 34) = 20.79, p < .001, there was no significant interaction of gender with either of the mood contrasts, F(1, 34) < 1 in both cases.

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Push-up Self-Eficacy

Mood did have an effect on self-efficacy regarding push-ups. Happy sub- jects thought they could perform more push-ups than Sad subjects, F(l, 34) = 8.01, p < .01, and across the three treatments there was no significant departure from a linear trend, F(l, 34) < 1. Men scored higher than women, F(l, 34) = 21.33, p < .001, but there were no significant interactions of gender with the mood contrasts, F(1,34) < 1 for both contrasts. These results show that the form of the self-efficacy rating scale used was not responsible for the lack of mood effects on handgrip efficacy.

The difference between efficacy results could have occurred partly because push-ups have an element of sustained effort or persistence that is absent from the handgrip task. Perhaps this component, which was susceptible to a mood in- fluence in Kavanagh (1985), augmented the mood impact on estimated strength. However, this could not be a complete explanation, as performance differences in maximum handgrip were also obtained. It seems more likely that the differ- ence between efficacy results on the two tasks derives from the amount of infor- mation available to subjects. Some subjects spontaneously reported difficulty with the handgrip efficacy measures because they had no experience of the task. The time between sessions also prevented subjects from using their previous scores as a base from which they could record an increase or decrease in efficacy. In contrast, most subjects reported some experience with push-ups, although some- times they had only a general idea of their current ability. A degree of variability or ambiguity in efficacy may be essential to a mood effect on efficacy judgments, but the presence of some performance information provided an anchor to the push- up efficacy judgments, allowing the mood effect to emerge.

Bower's (1981) theory of mood and memory is consistent with this ap- proach. People's achievements tend to vary considerably. High achievements are often characterized as successes. They attract rewards and result in feelings of elation, whereas low performances are often seen as failures and trigger disap-

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Happy and Sad Moods 1 121

changes in the absence of altered self-efficacy, it would, given previous research on perceived exertion, be more persuasive in the context of pain or sustained effort rather than in brief maximum exertion (Leventhal& Everhart, 1979; Robert- son, 1982).

Although the present study does not resolve the question of mediation, it does suggest that substantial changes in mood state alter performance on a test of physical strength. Whether this generalizes to performance on other physical tasks or to competitive situations remains to be examined. Since competitors are often separated by narrow margins, a small objective variation in performance produced by mood change could prove very significant for sporting outcome. Positive mood may also have other benefits not tested in this study. For exarn- ple, it may help athletes persevere in their training programs in the face of set- backs (cf. Kavanagh, 1985), promoting some degree of satisfaction for performances that successfully approach final goals (cf. Kavanagh, 1983; Wright & Mischel, 1982). Such speculations, however, remain to be confirmed.

Acknowledgment

We are grateful for the assistance of Barbara Davidson and Teresa Thomas, who acted as experimenters in the first study. Teresa also worked on Experiment 2.

Appendix: Transcripts of Mood Tapes Used in Experiment 2

Beginning of Happy and Sad Tapes

Sit back and make yourself comfortable. Relax and close your eyes. Focus all your attention on my voice. Let yourself sink into the chair and become completely absorbed in the things I am telling you. In a moment, I want you to use your imagination. I want you to think about one of the happyisad situ- ations you were just describing. . . .to picture it so vividly that it might be happening right now. . . .to feel just the same inside.

Think about the situation now. Imagine it as vividly as you can. Make the picture come alive. See all the details. Picture the surroundings as clear- ly as possible. See the people, the objects. Hear the sounds. Experiencing the event happening to you. . . .thinking the same thoughts. . . .feeling the same feelings. . . .letting yourself react as if you were actually there.

Happy Mood Tape Continuation

As you imagine the situation, you realize that it is not a reward for anything you have done. No, you're just really lucky that this has happened. You're feeling happy, light-hearted. . . .feeling just great. You're smiling as you get right into the feeling. A warm, pleasant glow flows through you. . . .feeling really happy as you continue to focus all your attention on the experience. Deepen the feeling even more. . . .warm, smiling, light-hearted. . . .feeling incredibly happy.

122 1 Kavanagh and Hausfeld

When you're ready, turn off the tape recorder, and continue to im- agine the situation.

Sad Mood Tape Continuation

As you imagine the situation, you realize that it is not a punishment for any- thing you have done. No, you're just very unlucky that this has happened. You're feeling sad. You heart is heavy. You're feeling awful. A dark gloomy feeling settles on you. Your posture is slumping, your face is elongating as you get right into the feeling. Notice the feeling deepening, become more and more intense. You may even be on the verge of tears as the scene really comes alive. . . .feeling really sad as you continue to focus all your attention on the experience. Deepen the feeling even more. Black, depressed, a great weight of sadness lays on you.

When you're ready, turn off the tape recorder, and continue to im- agine the situation.

References

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Manuscript submitted: October 4, 1985 Revision received: February 18, 1986