Science Digest: How Sleep, Teams, and Control Impact Resilience.
Welcome to my Science Digest. It’s my once a month collection that pulls from the most interesting research I've come across and are designed to keep you informed, and provide some actionable insight. Sometimes, it’s on resilience or connection, other times running training or mental health.
I’m a science nerd at heart. But I’m also a coach. Which means the goal is both interesting research and actionable insights.
This month we're talking about resilience and performance. We'll talk about how to harness controlled aggression, the power of a team around you, and even how sleep impacts our ability to be tough.
The Two Types of Aggression and How it Impacts Performance
What they found: The study argues that human aggression should be understood as bimodal, consisting of two distinct types: proactive and reactive aggression.
Proactive Aggression: This type is planned, goal-oriented, involves a purposeful attack, and often lacks high emotional arousal.
Reactive Aggression: This is an impulsive, 'hot-headed' response to a perceived threat or frustration, aimed at removing the provoking stimulus and associated with anger and loss of control.
Think about this distinction in sport or performance. There's a reason why football players like Aaron Donald talk about "controlled aggression." They are trying to be proactive and intentional. This isn't the reactive, tear your head off, lose all cool variety. This is one of the vital lessons we miss in sport. We say to be aggressive, but too often, that leads to the hot-headed reactive variety.
Actionable Insights:
Aggression in Sport is Not Monolithic: Recognizing the proactive/reactive distinction is vital. A strategic, premeditated foul to stop a counter-attack (proactive) is fundamentally different from a player lashing out in anger after being fouled (reactive). Analyzing sports aggression requires identifying which type is occurring
Proactive Aggression is Strategic: Athletes or teams might use proactive aggression when they calculate the potential rewards (e.g., intimidating a key opponent, gaining a tactical advantage) outweigh the risks (e.g., penalties). Rules, officiating, and penalties directly influence this cost-benefit analysis and can shape the prevalence of proactive aggression in a sport.
Managing Reactive Aggression is Key: Since reactive aggression stems from anger, frustration, and poor impulse control, emotional regulation is critical for athletes. High-stakes competition can easily create frustrating or threatening situations, increasing the likelihood of reactive outbursts. This underscores the importance of mental skills training in sport.
.
What happens when flow ends? How and why your creativity is limited after a flow experience
What they found: Across three studies with 746 participants, the researchers found that experiencing flow can lead to a negative carry-over effect, creating a figurative "tunnel vision" that limits creativity, particularly verbal creativity, in the next task. This impairment occurs because flow reduces cognitive flexibility, which is the ability to switch focus and consider different perspectives. The effect was shown to persist across multiple subsequent tasks after the initial flow experience
Actionable Insights:
Flow Might Hinder Subsequent Creativity: While flow is beneficial for performance during a task, it can temporarily impair your ability to think creatively immediately afterward. If your book competition requires creative thinking or generating novel ideas "in the clutch," engaging in a highly absorbing flow-inducing activity right before might be counterproductive.
Beware the "Tunnel Vision" Effect: Flow creates intense focus, but this can carry over as a narrowed attentional focus ("tunnel vision") that limits your ability to think divergently or flexibly on the next task. Clutch performance often requires adapting to unexpected questions or finding creative connections, which this tunnel vision could inhibit.
Structure Your Pre-Competition Time Carefully: Consider how you structure your time immediately before the competition. Avoid deep flow states just before tasks requiring high creativity; perhaps allow for a break or engage in activities that promote broader, more flexible thinking.
Can Sleep Improve Your Mental Toughness?
What they found: In this systematic review including over 131,000 individuals, researchers investigated the relationship between sleep (duration and quality) and mental toughness. The pooled results showed a statistically significant, positive correlation between both sleep duration and sleep quality with resilience, though the correlation was weak for sleep duration (r=0.11) and somewhat stronger, but still moderate, for sleep quality (r=0.27). The relationship remained significant but slightly weaker for prospective studies looking at sleep quality (r=0.18). The authors speculate that the relationship could be bidirectional: good sleep might enhance resilience by improving cognitive readiness to cope with stressors and regulating stress hormones like cortisol, while higher resilience might protect sleep quality by fostering adaptive coping strategies and reducing factors like rumination that interfere with sleep.
Sleep Quality Boosts Resilience: Better sleep quality is moderately associated with higher resilience and mental toughness. Prioritizing good quality sleep leading up to and during the competition could bolster your ability to handle pressure, adapt to challenges, and maintain performance. The link is stronger for sleep quality than just duration.
Good Sleep Enhances Cognitive Readiness: Sufficient, good quality sleep likely leaves individuals better cognitively equipped to cope with stressors. This means being well-rested could improve your focus, decision-making, and ability to apply adaptive strategies during the high-pressure moments of the competition.
Resilience May Protect Sleep: Highly resilient people might manage daily challenges better without it interfering with their psychological state, possibly through less rumination, leading to better sleep. Building resilience through practice or other means could potentially create a positive feedback loop, improving sleep which further enhances performance under pressure.
Sleep Aids Stress Regulation: Healthy sleep habits help regulate cortisol homeostasis, a key stress hormone. Better sleep might therefore improve your physiological ability to cope with the stress of the competition, preventing overwhelm and helping maintain composure in clutch situations.
How Stress and Mental Toughness Impact Academic Performance
What they found: In this small study, researchers looked at relationship between a variety of psychological measures and performance on a college Physics exam. They examined the roles of self-compassion, coping styles, mental toughness (MT), grit, and self-reported stress (both chronic and acute, measured via self-report and cortisol levels). Results suggested that higher self-reported acute stress on exam day predicted lower exam scores, while higher college GPA and appraising the exam as a challenge predicted higher scores. Mental toughness was found to be a significant predictor of both lower stress and higher exam scores in simpler regression models, whereas grit was not. Self-compassion correlated negatively with stress and positively with exam scores. Emotion-focused coping correlated positively with stress and negatively with exam scores.
Actionable Insights:
Self-Compassion as a Buffer: Being kind and understanding towards yourself, especially regarding limitations or failures, can help manage performance stress. Self-compassion is linked to perceiving less stress and may prevent negative self-talk from consuming cognitive resources, potentially leading to better performance under pressure
Problem-Focused Coping May Aid Performance: Approaching stressful situations (like a tough competition question) by actively trying to solve the problem (problem-focused coping) might be more beneficial for performance than focusing primarily on managing the emotional distress (emotion-focused coping). Higher MT is also associated with using more problem-focused strategies.
Perceived Stress Impacts Performance: The study found self-reported stress predicted exam performance. This highlights that how stressed you feel about the competition can directly impact how well you perform. Managing this perception through strategies like self-compassion or leveraging mental toughness is key.
Mismatch (Too Easy/Too Hard) Can Lead to Disengagement: Tasks that are significantly easier or harder than your current skill level are associated with lower intrinsic reward and potentially less focused brain activity (more default mode network activity). Avoid challenges that are clearly beyond your reach or tasks so simple they become boring, as both can undermine clutch performance.
How Belonging Improves Resilience and Well-being
What They Found: This study examined how strongly players identified with their team and how this related to their resilience, stress levels, and overall positive and negative affect over a competitive season. The research found that stronger identification with the rugby team was associated with higher levels of personal resilience and positive affect, and lower levels of negative affect and perceived stress. In other words, when we feel connected to the team and those around us, the difficult seems more manageable. When we feel supported, we see things as challenges to take on, instead of fearing failure.
Actionable Insights:
Strong Group Identification Boosts Resilience: Identifying strongly with a relevant group is linked to higher personal resilience. Feeling part of something larger than yourself can enhance your ability to bounce back from setbacks during the competition.
Social Identity is a Stress Buffer: A strong sense of belonging to a group can help buffer the negative impacts of stress on well-being. Feeling connected and supported, even implicitly, by identifying with a group might make the pressures of the competition feel less overwhelming and more manageable.
Shared Identity Enhances Positive Feelings: Stronger social identity contributes to more positive affect (feeling enthusiastic, proud, inspired). Leveraging a sense of shared purpose or identity related to the competition could help maintain motivation and positive emotions, contributing to clutch performance.
Team Climate Matters: The perceived climate within the group (supportive, communicative) likely plays a role. Being part of a positive and supportive study group or team environment where you feel a strong sense of shared identity can amplify the benefits for resilience and stress management.
Belonging Reduces Negative Affect: Feeling a strong sense of belonging is associated with lower negative affect (less distress, nervousness, etc.). Cultivating this sense of connection related to the competition could help manage anxiety and maintain composure under pressure.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read my random musings on the latest science and research. Expect more of the same every month.
And as a reminder, don't forget to order my new book WIN THE INSIDE GAME! It's 25% off! (I don't control the price!)
All the best,
Steve