Factors Affecting The Cognitive Appraisals Of Elite Archers In Competitive Situations

Cognitive appraisal is a key process in stress coping for athletes. In stress situations,athletes first make cognitive appraisal (challenging or threatening) about external conditions and themselves, then adopt certain coping strategies.In order to investigate the mechanism of athletes' coping,it is necessary to examine the relations between cognitive appraisal and related factors,which is not only helpful to solve the "why" problems in the stress coping,but also to supply foundation for finding effective strategies of coping.This research mainly studies influencing factors of cognitive appraisal.That is helpful to find out athletes' cognitive characteristics in coping and to develop a model of stress-coping and effective coping strategies.This paper investigates three main factors(locus of control, perceived attitude of coaches and types of stressor) which possibly affect athletes' cognitive appraisal based on Lazarus' stress-coping interaction theory.Qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted in three experiments here.Pre-experiment:18 elite archers and 3 coaches participated in semi-structured interview pertaining to their stress experiences during competition.The collected date were coded and analyzed and three stress topics were summarized:result,points,technique /action.Experiment one was based on these results.Experiment one:24 elite archers answered the questions of 'Stress Investigation Questionnaire' constructed to find sentences matching different stress topics and that expressing the coaches' attitudes or behaviors that athletes perceived under stress situations.Experiment two was based on these results.Experiment two:24 elite archers answered the questions of 'stress appraisal questionnaire'.The effects of athletes' locus of control, apperceived attitude of coaches and types of stressors on cognitive appraisal were explored and the results were:First:The cognitive appraisal of elite archers under stress conditions is affected by locus of control,and the difference is significant for successful locus of control:athletes of internal locus of control are easier to make threatening/negative appraisals than those of external locus of control.Second:Different types of stressors has little effect on cognitive appraisals,but to different locus of control,cognitive appraisal is significant difference between different types of stressors.Third:The coaches' attitude that archers perceive has little effect on cognitive appraisal,but the difference tendency existed to some extend.