Effects Of Different Control Contents And Methods On Athletes' Ego Depletion

A good ability of self-control is a prerequisite for athlete to successfully cope with training and competition stress, it would also be a guarantee of achieving outstanding performance. Self-control, as a limited cognitive resource, can be depleted by using. Athlete'self-control can be impaired by all negative thoughts or feelings in training and competition. How to deal effectively with these negative thoughts and feelings, and then promoting sport performance becomes one of the major areas of sport psychologists'concerns. The theory of ironic effect of mental control (Wegner,1994) is combined with self-control depletion theory (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven,& Tice, 1998) to explore the effect of thought suppression and expression on athletes'self-control depletion, and provide a theoretical guidance for athletes'thinking regulating. The theory of emotion regulation (Huang, 2001; Gross,2002) is integrated into self-control depletion theory (Baumeister et al.,1998) to discuss the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies, and give a necessary theoretical foundation and experimental support for athletes'effectively regulating negative emotions.Four studies were conducted to explore effects of different control contents and methods on athletes'self-control depletion. In Study 1, research explores the effects of different thinking contents on athletes'self-control depletion. Results suggest that different thinking contents require different levels of control resources, the thinking content which is close to sport context is more difficult to control, thereby, result in more self-control depletion. In Study 2, which is on the basis of Study 1, research explores the effect of thought suppression and expression on athletes'self-control depletion. Results suggest that thought suppression, compared with thought expression, is more difficult to do, thereby appears more depletion. In Study 3, on the basis of Study 2, research explores the effect of negative emotion suppression and expression on athletes'self-control depletion. Results suggest that suppressing negative emotion is a worse strategy when making a comparison to expressing. In Study 4, research explores the effect of reappraisal negligence and reappraisal reinforcement on athletes'self-control depletion. Results suggest that reappraisal reinforcement was a worse strategy than reappraisal negligence, may also result in more self-control depletion.Theoretically, this research enriches effect factors of self-control depletion, as well as provides theoretical foundation for effectively alleviating aftereffects of self-control depletion and promoting athletes'ability of self-control. In practice, this research further extends self-control depletion application in sports, provides guidelines for athletes'psychological training. This research suggests that athletes should transfer their attention from sport when encountering negative thinking. Psychologists should recommend athletes to concern the things they should concentrate instead of recommending them not to think something, meanwhile stop telling them to think nothing when encountering distracting thoughts. When athletes faced negative emotions, on the one hand, if they take response-focused emotion regulations to cope, emotion expression would be the best choice; on the other hand, if they prefer to take cognitive reappraisal regulations, then reappraisal negligence strategy should be paid more attention.