Dr. Chris Wagstaff, the Course Leader for Sport Exercise Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, has published new research in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology following a study into the effect of suppressing emotions in endurance sports.

The study found strong evidence that trying to bury emotions in order to better focus on the competitive sport at hand results in far poorer performance, meaning athletes need to let their feelings out should they wish to increase their chances of winning.

Dr Wagstaff said: “Sports people frequently have to control their emotions in the run-up to and during competition, but this appears to significantly reduce the level at which they perform. Their thought processes are diminished, they put in less effort and they feel more tired than when they aren’t asked to hide what they’re feeling.

“We all know the feeling of having to sometimes hide our thoughts and feelings. It can make us feel exhausted, and because sportspeople operate in a result-driven goldfish bowl, the demands for suppression are particularly high.

“To protect sporting performance, it’s important that those who manage and organise sportspeople should avoid exposing them to tasks which demand emotion regulation close to competing.”

Interviews with press and media, meet-and-greets with fans, or everyday feelings of anxiety, anger, or disgust were cited in the study as potential sources of stress for sportsmen and sportswomen.

The findings of the research can also be applied to non-sport professions which require emotional regulation and physical endurance, such as the military, or roles in medical emergency services.

Dr. Wagstaff went on: “Sports organisations impose chronic expectations and requirements for emotional suppression on performers, such as being overly optimistic about chances of success, being supportive of under-performing leaders, or being friendly to fans and forthcoming with media, but there is a cost in terms of performance.”

20 athletes were studied by researchers for the experiment — they were asked to watch a three-minute video in which a woman throws up and then eats her own vomit. The clip was chosen for its shock factor to instil a strong feeling of disgust in the athletes.

Dr. Wagstaff explained: “We needed to elicit a strong emotional reaction. While there is huge variation in what individuals find happy or sad, most people agree on what is disgusting.”

The investigation was split into three conditions. The first set of participants were told to watch the video while hiding their disgust, and had cameras trained on their faces to record their reactions. The second set of participants were told not to suppress their feelings towards the video, and the third set weren’t asked to watch the video at all.

All three sets of participants then had to cycle for 10km as quickly as possible.

The results showed that those who had suppressed their feelings towards the video performed much worse than other participants. After three minutes of having to regulate their own emotions, they were slower at cycling, generated less power, had a lower heart rate, and thought afterwards that they had worked much harder than they actually had, whilst those who weren’t asked to regulate their emotions or didn’t watch the video at all showed the opposite results.

No differences were found between the set of participants who watched the video without suppressing their emotions and the set of participants who didn’t see the clip.

Dr. Wagstaff said: “It is notable that those asked to suppress their emotions had a significantly lower maximum heart rate. This appears to indicate that people who are suppressing emotion are less willing or less able to put their all into the task. They also feel more tired, even though they had put in less effort.”

The findings support and significantly extend the results discovered through prior research on the same topic of the effects of self-regulation and emotional control on physical ability.

Dr. Wagstaff concluded: “It appears to be possible that increasing demands on sports people to suppress their emotions leads to an overload. Those forced to suppress their emotions become less able to control their emotions and the end result is someone who has poor personal relationships and who is not good at managing conflict. To compound the problem further, a failure to self-regulate is linked to violence, doping, substance abuse and cheating.”

At the University of Portsmouth, Dr. Wagstaff’s research focuses on the psychology of how individuals and teams work in high-pressure environments, exploring concepts of stress, emotion, leadership, and organisational skills and time management. He is also a reviewer for leading journals in the field of psychology.

Dr. Wagstaff explained his research in a minute-long video, embedded below: