Arousal theories and the relationship between arousal and performance

Catastrophe Theory 

This suggest that their is an optimum level of arousal where you are performing at your best however if you go past this point then your performance will drop significantly.

This graph reiterates the first point and when the catastrophe occurs there is a significant decline however through the help of coaches who can help you you can start to regain arousal and build it up again. However without this help you are going to continue to decline.

There is an optimum point for arousal where your performance is at its best however if you become over aroused a catastrophe will occur. Lower levels or arousal will just mean that you are not performing to your capable standards.

A case study of this is Ben Flower who became so over aroused in the super league cup final he punched an opposition player to then receive a red card and get banned for 6 months

The Drive Theory

This theory suggests that their is a linear relationship between arousal and performance, which basically means that the more aroused you are the better your performance will be.\

When aroused performers will produce something called a dominant habit or response which is what our body/mind will revert back to when we are not thinking about what we are doing (The typical behaviour pattern of an individual either skilled or non skilled in the execution of a task). In other words it is what we do autonomously. This suggests that elite performers will benefit the most from arousal because it will produce the dominant habit/response which will most likely be the correct one as that will be their autonomous action. Where as novice performer's dominant response may not be the correct one.

This graph just says that as your arousal levels increase so will your performance and that will continue.

A case study of this is when Lucas Rosol beat Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon due to the crowd he was getting very aroused but it didn't seem to affect his performance as he kept on playing better and better and ended up beating the world number 2 at the time.






Inverted U Theory

This theory suggest that arousal levels reach an optimum point where performance levels are highest but if arousal continues over arousal can occur and then performance levels slowly dip. This is similar to the catastrophe theory where there is an optimum point however instead of  a significant decrease there is just a gradual decrease.

There are different arousal levels where performance differs:

Under-aroused- Lack of attention and concentration
Moderate arousal- Optimum level, good selective attention and concentration.
Over-aroused- Loss of focus, misses cues, makes poor decisions, experience muscle tensions and may show aggressive behaviour.

There is a zone of optimal arousal for each person number of factors such as:

Nature of the task- Complex task would require lower arousal levels where as a gross skill would require higher levels of arousal to perform best.
Skill level- Experienced performers can cope with higher levels of arousal where as novice performers may need to focus harder on the cues.
Personality- Extroverts can deal with higher arousal levels compared to introverts.


This graph shows that there is an optimum level of arousal where performance is at its highest and after that performance decreases.

This all depends on the task as archery would require a completely different optimum arousal level compared to making a rugby tackle.