Arousal and mindset in archery: Kerr 1997 study

Twenty-eight archers from a Japanese university club, a mix of skilled, average and novice, shot 3 arrows at 50 metres under conditions that combined a serious or playful frame of mind with low or high arousal. The study is based on reversal theory, which holds that people switch between a serious, goal-directed state that prefers low arousal and a playful, spontaneous one that prefers high arousal. The hypothesis was that the serious state with low arousal, the closest to the calm focus described by top archers, would produce the best scores.

Mean scores, out of a maximum of 30, were almost identical: 18.8 (standard deviation 5.9) serious and calm, 19.4 (4.5) serious and aroused, 18.4 (5.2) playful and calm, 19.6 (4.1) playful and aroused. The hypothesis was rejected. The manipulations had worked: after rest, heart rate was 71.8 beats per minute and after the step test 98.5, and with the "serious" instructions the archers rated themselves more serious and more inclined to plan.

In an analysis added afterwards, leaving out the novices, the authors compared the conditions in which arousal matched the level preferred in that state (serious and calm, playful and aroused) with the others: 20.9 points (standard deviation 2.9) against 19.0 (4.7), a non-significant difference (p = 0.06 on a one-tailed test).

The archers were 23 men and 5 women aged 18 to 25 (mean 20.7) from the Tsukuba University club, randomly split into two groups of 14 balanced for sex and ability, with ability based on scores from an earlier tournament and the judgement of two club coaches. One group shot under the two low arousal conditions and the other under the two high arousal conditions, each on two separate occasions with the order alternated.

To lower arousal the archers lay quietly on a bench for 5 minutes; to raise it they did the Harvard step test, stepping up and down a 40 cm step 30 times a minute for 5 minutes. The serious state was induced by telling them to shoot seriously, with an expected score of 10, within the official 2-minute limit; the playful state by telling them to shoot spontaneously, taking their time and not thinking about the score, with no time limit. Before the manipulation each archer shot 3 practice arrows without being told where they landed. Heart rate was taken with an Omron finger pulse metre at four points; frame of mind and felt arousal with the Telic State Measure in Japanese translation, and individual disposition with the Paratelic Dominance Scale. Shooting took place at the university range with the archers' own equipment.

Three arrows per condition is very few: with standard deviations of 4 to 6 points out of 30, only very large differences would have shown up, and the group included novices with highly variable results. High arousal was produced with five minutes of step test, in other words with physical fatigue: the effect of arousal on the shot cannot be separated from the effect of being out of breath and having tired muscles. The serious state was induced together with a time limit and a score target, the playful state with neither, so here too several things change at once. Each archer tried only two of the four conditions, and the comparison between high and low arousal is between different groups.

The analysis added afterwards counts each archer twice, since each had shot in one "pleasant" and one "unpleasant" condition, and nothing suggests the test takes this into account; it uses a one-tailed test and still does not reach significance. The idea that what matters is the match between arousal and the preferred state remains the authors' hypothesis, not a finding.

The study does not support the common idea that archers shoot better when calm and serious, nor the opposite: over three arrows no combination of frame of mind and arousal made a difference. So it does not say that relaxing before an end is pointless, nor that stepping up to the line with a racing heart is harmful; it says that with this design nothing showed up.

The more interesting hypothesis, that archers do better when they feel as aroused as they would like to at that moment, is only hinted at by the data and would need checking with many more arrows and without the fatigue of the step test.