The Influence Of Making A Fist On Subsequent Performance In Tennis Athlete

Mind-body relationship is one of the hot topics in psychology research. The relationship between mind and body is complicated, and there is still a lot of discussion and controversy in academic world. The traditional cognitive paradigm treats the advanced cognitive activity as the computer processing. That means cognition is independent of body, and body is only an output device of mind. This cognitive paradigm ignores the effect of body in cognitive activity. In recent years, more and more researchers were found that body activity was not only the reflection of mental process, but also had important impacts on cognition, altitude and emotion. That means the mental process is embodied, and more theories are found on the basis, such as embodied cognition, embodied emotion and so on.In embodied theory, one’s body feature or gesture is not only the reflection of mind, but also affects one’s cognition and emotion. In tennis match, players often have some strong body languages when they win or lose some key points, such as making a fist after winning one point or shaking his head after losing one point. Previous studies show that making a fist can enhance one’s self-esteem, confidence and sense of power. In this study, we ask whether or how making a fist which is observable in many tennis matches influences players’subsequent performance.This research includes two studies. In order to compare the point immediately after making a fist or not, the author observe 38 men and women’s single matches in 2014 Australian Open,2014 French Open and 2014 Wimbledon Championships in study 1. The results show that, the first sever percentage after making a fist is higher than which not making a fist, but this improvement only appears in female players. Moreover, making a fist can improve one’s percentage of winning the scores, and this improvement appears in both male and female players. It suggests that making a fist can possibly improve the performance of players’serve and strikes. Further analysis shows that making a fist has significant impact on winning a match, and male players have more fist influence than female players.In study 2,16 male college tennis players participate in a experiment in order to investigate psychological effects of making a fist.16 players are divided into 2 groups (fist/not fist) according to their level randomly, and each participate is required to play a match with one member in other group. The results of the analysis of the statistics in each match show no significant differences between groups. The participates are asked to fill the Tennis Performance scale when the match is over, and the analysis of the score of the scale show that there are no reliable difference on each subscales scores between groups.In this study, the influence of making a fist is obvious in the situation of competitions but not in the experimental conditions. It suggests that under the condition of high pressure and high level athlete, maybe it’s easier to find the influence of making a fist.