Haunting about death helps players play better

Reminders about death can improve the performance of athletes due to the self-esteem mechanism to reduce the fear of the brain.

Uri Lifshin, a graduate student in psychology, University of Arizona, USA and colleagues conclude the threat of death and the mechanism of the brain used to deny this threat can cause athletes to compete. better, UPI reported on October 31.

"The subconscious of people always try to find ways to defeat death, making death no longer a difficult problem. The solution given is self-esteem. Self-esteem makes you feel like you are part. of something bigger, has an immortal chance and your existence has a certain meaning , " Lifshin explained.

To learn how the fear of a person's death can affect their self-esteem, the team recruits men to join a basketball game.

Colin Zestcott (left) and Uri Lifshin believe that fear of death can improve the performance of athletes.(Photo: University of Arizona).

Zestcott plays one-on-one basketball with the study participants. Between the two matches, half of them received questionnaires and missions to elicit thoughts about death. The rest are asked to think about basketball. The results showed that those who were reminded of death had higher performance in the following battle.

In the second experiment, Zestcott used a more clever reminder. He wore a shirt printed with many "dead" words while explaining the rules of a simple shooting competition. Just like the first experiment, only half of the experiment participants saw this shirt. As a result, people who see the word "dead" on shirts compete 30% better than others.

"They shot more, got better, pushed more and ran faster , " Lifshin said.

This result reinforces the hypothesis of controlling fear, assuming that people reduce the fear of death by developing self-respect or thinking of immortality.

The team thinks that many coaches accidentally use this hypothesis to stimulate their team. How to remind the team about their properties, as well as how their performance can affect their reputation is likely to have a similar impact.

"This is a potential method to motivate athletes but it can also stimulate people who work in other fields. In addition to sports, we think this hypothesis has a close relationship with Other performance-related tasks, such as work, are therefore very excited about the prospect of this study, " Zestcott said.