Athletic performance is improved by our belief about whether we are athletic or not
Summary
- Athletic performance is improved by our belief about whether we are athletic or not
Details
- a group of unathletic people were randomly asked to excercise then split randomly into two. One group were told they were in excellent shape, and the other group were told they were among the least fit.
- The group who believed they were in the top half outperformed the 2nd group by a significant margin, and also said they enjoyed the work out more
References
Quotes
Our journey into the science of power begins in a lab filled with several dozen exercise-averse volunteers. This group of twenty-eight female students had been brought together precisely because they did not exercise particularly often – a fact that some scientists at the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign thought presented a research opportunity. In their study, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, they set out to test a simple hypothesis: that our confidence in our athletic abilities has a huge impact on what those abilities actually are. At the beginning of the experiment, all twenty-eight students were
asked to cycle on a stationary bike for a fixed amount of time while a device measured their heart rate and VO2 max (the amount of oxygen your body can absorb and use during exercise). Once the exercise session was over, the researchers split the students into two groups based on their performance on the exercise bike. After a brief cool-down period, they told students in group A (the ‘high confidence’ group) that, relative to other women of their age and experience, they were among the fittest. The students in group B (the ‘low confidence’ group), meanwhile, were told that they were among the least fit. And then both groups of women were left to stew for a few days. The truth was, the whole thing was a ruse.
The ‘high confidence’ group wasn’t actually better at exercise and the ‘low confidence’ group wasn’t actually worse. In fact, they’d been randomly allocated into the two groups and their performance on the exercise test had nothing to do with the message that was delivered. What the scientists were really interested in was the next stage: three days later, the participants were asked to come back to the lab to exercise for about thirty minutes and asked to rate how much they enjoyed this new session.
The results were striking. The researchers found that those in the‘high confidence’ group – who had been told how very fit they were – enjoyed the exercise session a lot more than the ‘low confidence’ group, who had been told they were unhealthy. This was even truer for exercise that was more intensive and challenging; when the participants were asked to cycle harder and for longer, the difference between the two groups became even more stark. When the going got tough, those who believed they could do it – regardless of their ability – were the ones who actually could. And, crucially, the students who were primed to be more confident ended up enjoying the exercise a lot more too.
This study was exploring a simple question. How does our level of self-confidence affect our performance? The answer to this question – along with those of many such studies before and since – is simple: a great deal. Feeling confident about our ability to complete a task makes us feel good when we’re doing it, and helps us do it better.