The Impact of a Substantial Loss on the Subsequent Performance of Teams in the Australian Football League AFL - Report Example

To examine the impact of a substantial loss on the subsequent performance of teams in the Australian Football League AFL Name: Course instructor: Institution: Date: Abstract Recent theories and research studies have devoted in creating attention to football teams usually on the assumption that the teams will improve their performance. Virtually, no research has focused on the impact of significant loss on the subsequent performance of football teams. Therefore, this research extrapolated the reactance and helplessness theories about failure at the individual level to the group level to investigate subsequent performance of football teams in the Australian football league that had attained significant loss in previous matches. The research used a strong inference methodology. It examined data for all Australian football leagues in from 2007 to 2010 seasons. Of the 704 games investigated, there were 695 games where there were results while 9 were draws. The results for the study show that the teams that suffered large losses had their subsequent performance significantly worsened. To examine the impact of a substantial loss on the subsequent performance of teams in the Australian Football League AFL Introduction Substantial loss on the subsequent performance of teams in the Australian Football League has various impacts. Theories show that when a team attains subsequent significant loss performance in a match, its performance is affected either positively or negatively, Barber W. (1987). However, research shows that performance problems predicted by learned helplessness does not rely on experimenter-induced failure. The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of a substantial loss on the subsequent performance of teams in the Australian football league. Theories show that the effects of non-dependent reinforcement on future performance are related to the amount of experience with non-dependant reinforcement to subject’s expectations of control. According to Barber W. (1987), Learned, helplessness theory suggests that performance depends on the causes to which individuals associate with failure. When individuals are not able to control the situations that they go through, they learn that they are helpless and can this contributes to poor performance. When individuals are unable to control the reinforcements they accrue through their behaviors, they usually consider themselves helpless. This feeling of helplessness still occurs in subsequent new situations and this undermines the individual’s motivation to perform better. In addition, the feeling of helplessness also occurs in situations in which an individual has possible control. According to Jardine E. (2004), failure renders people to consider themselves hopeless and powerless and this makes them not to control their subsequent performances. Research on the effects of lack of control over an experience of an unsolvable problem shows that people who had experienced lack of control made more errors and received more shock in the subsequent problems. Learned helplessness shows that when people encounter difficulties in a situation, they are likely to encounter difficulties in similar subsequent situations due to the feeling they get in the first situation, Martin D. (2003). The reactance theory shows that when individuals encounter a threat of defeat, they produce a state of reactance that motivates them to work hard to perform well, Barber W. (1987). Previous research shows that the intensity of reactance an individual exhibits is a direct function of variables such as the individual’s expectation to better their performance, the importance of the situation threatened and the implication of the defeat to the individual’s future performance. The reactance theory predicts that when people encounter defeat in competitions, they will be motivated to renew their attempts to perform better in the subsequent events. Moreover, people will aggressively react to those situations that they perceive as the cause of loss and this makes them work harder to overcome the challenges, Jardine E. (2004). Although helplessness theory and reactance theory seem to predict opposite reactions to the loss of control experience, they still complement each other, Reisel W. and Kopelman R. (1995). The individual’s response to a difficult situation is a function of three factors; the expectation control, the importance of the outcome over which control is lost and the amounts of exposure to outcome independence experience. This means that if an individual expects control that an experience of loss will engender reactance and the individual will attempt to reassert control. In such cases, facilitated performance on a subsequent situation is predicted. According to Reisel W. and Kopelman R. (1995), the helplessness and reactance theories show that when a person expects control, his/her initial reaction to a loss of control will be one of the reactance. Additional experience of loss of control will make an individual to conclude that they lack control and this will lead to a feeling of helplessness. The stronger the initial expectation of control, the greater the amount of exposure to the response-outcome independence which is required before one considers himself/herself helpless. The relationship between helplessness and reactance theory on the impact of significant loss on the subsequent performance of a team is influenced by the subjective importance of the outcome over which control can no longer be excited, Reisel W. and Kopelman R. (1995). The greater the importance of the outcome, the more the individual will be motivationally aroused to reestablish control when exposed to non-dependant situations between response and outcome. The link between reactance and helplessness theory is marked by the expectation of control. This means that when people expect control over an outcome, the initial trials of helplessness will result in psychological reactance or increased attempts to maintain control. The more important the outcome, the more reactance the individual experiences and consequently the better the subsequent performance, Wortman C and Brehm J. (2008). Failure is a common experience among people. This research focused on the substantial loss on the subsequent performance and its effect in AFL teams. Although many people have conducted researches on failure at individual level, few have focused on the group responses to failure. This research was concerned with the investigation of the impact of substantial loss on the subsequent performance of teams in the Australian Football League AFL. Various theories show the effect of failure on subsequent performance of people. The reactance theory and learned helplessness theory are the ones that were used in examining the effect of substantial loss on the subsequent performances of AFL teams in the years between 2007 and 2010. These two theories helped in providing competing predictions about how individuals will respond to failure. The impact of losing a match in AFL teams depends on the magnitude of the loss. The reactance theory shows that after a failure, the individual initially attempts to regain control of the situation, Salon W. (1998). This theory predicts that the individual will subsequently try harder to improve their performance, hypothesis 1A. However, if the increased effort does not lead to success, the effort may start dissipating. Following the reactance theory, it was predicted that after a large loss, subsequent AFL team performance would improve. The learned helplessness theory shows that individual experience a sense of futility when outcomes are perceived to be beyond their control, Salon W. (1998). Since this sense of self-efficacy generalizes to other situations, they may come to possess a low sense of self-efficacy. This clearly shows that failure breeds failure. According to the learned helplessness theory, it was hypothesized that after a large loss, the subsequent performance of the Australian football league teams deteriorated, hypothesis 1B. The extent of the worsening of the subsequent team failures is a point of contention between reactance theory and learned helplessness theory, Gannon L, Heiser P, and Knight S. (2005).. According to the reactance theory, the larger the first loss, the greater the improvement in subsequent team performance in the AFL, hypothesis 2A. Another pertinent to the magnitude of initial failure is seen in the learned helplessness theory which states that the larger the first loss in a football league, the higher the decrement in the subsequent team performance, hypothesis 2B. The learned helplessness theory shows that people will eventually lower their efforts on subsequent tasks because of subsequent failure, Salon W. (1998). The main aim of this research was to investigate the impact of significant failure on the subsequent performance of AFL teams. The participants of the research were the AFL teams in the seasons between the year 2007 and 2010. The hypothesis of this research is that significant loss in a match is likely to cause poor performance in the subsequent matches. The design used in the study was quasi experimental. Method Participants The participants in this study were all the AFL games in the 2007 to 2010 seasons. Out of the total 704 games studied, there were 695 games that gave results and 9 that gave draws. The research looked at the games in the seasons of 2007 to 2010. Materials The materials in the study were the AFL teams in the 2007 to 2010 seasons. T-tests and SPS were used to generate results for the study. Observation method was used where data collected was recorded in tables and scales were used to rate the performance of each team. Procedure The research looked at the games from 2007 to 2010. During this research, the big loss 60 points or more was required in this research. A comparison group looked at games where there was a loss between 42-59 points. The information was placed in SPS and was used to generate the t-test results. The research gathered archival data for four professional football seasons in the Australian football league. The football seasons were for the years 2007 to 2010. We obtained a total of 704 games in the football season. In the Australian football league, 695 games gave results while 9 games gave draws. The first and last week games were eliminated because the study design entailed comparing performance in the game following a loss (the focal game) to performance in the game preceding such a loss (the preceding game). The research shows that no preceding game data would be available for losses prior to the preseason play. In addition, no focal game would be available after a loss in the last week. This means that the post-season play was excluded. The sample of 704 games was reduced to 695 after eliminating the nine games that resulted into draws. Measures Magnitude of loss- although many sports fun are concerned with whether a team wins or losses. This criterion provides little information about the degree of failure. A team’s performance can be deemed successful despite losing if the magnitude of the loss was less than anticipated. Of the 704 games observed in this study, the magnitude of the loss ranged from 1 to 60 points. The mean for the loss was 63.60. Arguably, each loss has an equivalent weight in the season’s teams standing but not all losses may have the same psychological effects. We examined two categories of losses, large and very large. Due to the arbitrary nature of any set of cut-off points, the following rationale was applied. Large losses were those that occurred even less frequently, approximately 16% of the time. Very large losses were defined as those losses that involved points greater than 42. Large losses occurred in 17% of the games. The cut-off points were selected because they enabled us to balance two competing objectives. They yielded sufficient number of observations (large losses, n=211), very large losses (n=105) and offered readily interpretable categories. In the Australian football league, substantial loss involved losing a game. A very large loss was seen when a team lost a game by losing with 42 points or more than 7 goals. The rules in the Australian football team show that 1 in 6 game losses of 60 points or more can be termed as a very large loss. During this study, very large loss was rare and it occurred just over 16% of the time. A large loss occurred in 42 to 59 points and this was seen in 17% of the time. Therefore, losing a game was determined by losing in over 42 points. Substantial loss occurred in 33% of the time of the game. Moreover, similar frequency of the event for large and very large loss was witnessed in the study. Substantial loss was seen when more than 42 points occurred. Task performance in focal game was assessed in four different ways. A row score was the number of points by which a team won or lost. On the other hand, a net score controlled for differences in losing team’s ability by taking the difference between performances in the focal game compared with the preceding game. The preceding game was the game prior to loss. An adjusted raw score incorporated the speed predicted by the professional bookmarks. An adjusted net score combined the adjusted raw scores in the preceding focal game. The adjusted raw score was computed as the net score minus the point spread. Point spreads were obtained from the daily Australian post. The point spread was positive if the focal team was predicted to win and negative if it was predicted to lose. If the point spread in the focal game was -7 and the focal game raw score was -3, the adjusted raw score would be 4. This means that the focal team would have performed better than expected. To derive the adjusted net score, we calculated the difference between the adjusted raw score in the focal game and in the preceding game. Game preceding loss (preceding game) was achieved if a team lost by 47. Game after large loss (focal game) occurred when a team lost by 50 points. Therefore the net score = (-50)-(-47) =-3. Team performance was 3 points worse after large loss compared to performance prior to large loss. Results Data pertaining to hypothesis 1A and 1B showed that mean raw score performance in the focal game was -2.18 points, t(211)=1. The net performance score was 60. The two adjusted performance scores were also nonsignificant. Hence, neither hypothesis 1A nor 1B Data pertinent was supported. Data pertinent to hypothesis 2A and 2B included mean performance scores across 3 categories of losses. All losses, large loses and very large losses. Because competing predictions were examined, significant levels were assessed by using two tailed t-tests. Significant effects were observed for both raw score and net performance scores. Raw scores were on average of 6.57 points lower after large losses compared with large losses. Thus, hypothesis 2B was supported: the larger the initial loss, the greater did subsequent team performance decline. Conversely, hypothesis 2A was not supported. Adjusted measures of performance did not demonstrate significant differences. Table 1 Mean performance across preceding games, losing games and focal games Performance criterion Preceding game n=211 Losing game n=211 Focal game N=211 Net scores N=211 Raw score -14 -104 25 39 Net score -49 -60 -83 -34 Adjusted raw score -63.60 30 19 Adjusted net score N/A 19 This table shows that in season 1 of 2010, game score 2.4 fourth games in the second round of the 2010 season. Losing= raw score in the losing game. In the first part of the analysis, the relationship between performance on the losing game and the performance (raw score) in the next game (focal game) was examined. This part of the study utilized repeated measures design where the mean performance of the team of 211 occasion who lost by 42 points in the losing game was compared to the mean performance by the same team in the next game. With the net criterion, effects similar to those with the raw score criterion were found. A nonsignificant improvement performance between focal and preceding games occurred when the focal game opponent caliber was medium. However, when focal game criterion was high, a significant decrement in the net scores was observed. Discussion Our purpose in this study was to investigate the effects of significant loss on subsequent team performance. Virtually, no discussion of this study subject appears in the literature in-group performance. Instead, research on subsequent team performance after a significant failure has addressed such areas as process, group composition, enabling conditions, associates and importance of the task. The study examined performance outcomes after significant failure. Data were controlled for two moderating conditions- the magnitude of failure and level of the task difficulty. A strong inference approach was used in this research. Archival data obtained from Australian Football League for the seasons between 2007 and 2010 permitted the measurement of performance using a standardized set of priorities (group size, time period, game duration and frequency of the game) and a common metric. These commonalities are essential; it is often hard to compare performance among football teams given the different team capabilities and team performance. The research used several procedures to ameliorate the effects of potential nuisance variables. To control for variance in team ability, each Australian football league team served as its own control. The score in the focal game was compared with performance in the game preceding the loss. In addition, idiosyncratic influences were controlled by adjusted raw performance scores by the point spread of professional bookmarkers. The appropriateness of this adjustment was supported by a correlational analysis. Team performance in the 704 games was strongly correlated with the point spread, r=39; p is less than 0.05. Similarly, a strong negative correlation was found between the caliber of the opposition and a point spread, r=-.45; p is less than 0.05. Thus professional bookmakers were fairly accurate in incorporating the various idiosyncratic factors that complicate each unique performance situation. The main question in this study is how will teams respond after having failed badly? The results of the study support the learned helplessness theory and suggest that a significant decrement in performance may tend to follow failure. The hypothesis for the study was that the performance of any Australian football league team would decline in subsequent matches after experience a significant loss in the first game. Another finding of this research was that performance declines were moderated by perceived task difficulty. If the task perceived to be high, performance will worsen significantly. One of the limitations of this research is that the degree to which the present findings may generalize the populations other than in football games. Although the research found that very large failures led to performance decrements, the possibility remains that other variables may actually account for this relationship. This research provides evidence for learned helplessness theory, performance can be predicted to worsen following failure and still worsen further when groups are confronted with high-perceived task difficulty. Moreover, an extreme failure tends to worsen subsequent performance. The study therefore proposes the extension of learned helplessness theory beyond the individual domain to that of the group. The implication of the study for football teams is that significant loss in a game has potential of breeding further failure. References: Barber W. (1987). Three accounts of the learned helplessness effect. Gent soc gen psychology Monoar. 1987. May, 113 (2): 141-163 Gannon L, Heiser P, and Knight S. (2005). Learned helplessness versus reactance. The effects of sex-role stereotype. Volume 12, numbers 7-8, 791-806 Jardine E. (2004). Achievement motivation, psychological reactance and learned helplessness. Motivation and emotion. Volume 5, number 2, 99-113 Martin D. (2003). Learned helplessness and fear of success in college women. New York. Penguin publishers Reisel W. and Kopelman R. (1995). The effects of failure on subsequent group performance in a Professional sports setting. The journal of psychology, 129, 103-113 Salon W. (1998). Helplessness and facilitation: an evaluation of the learned proposed Integration of reactance and learned helplessness theories. New York. Rutledge Wortman C and Brehm J. (2008). Responses to uncontrollable outcomes: an integration of reactance theory and learned helplessness model. Advances in experimental social psychology. Volume 8, 277-336 Read More

Research on the effects of lack of control over an experience of an unsolvable problem shows that people who had experienced lack of control made more errors and received more shock in the subsequent problems. Learned helplessness shows that when people encounter difficulties in a situation, they are likely to encounter difficulties in similar subsequent situations due to the feeling they get in the first situation, Martin D. (2003). The reactance theory shows that when individuals encounter a threat of defeat, they produce a state of reactance that motivates them to work hard to perform well, Barber W. (1987). Previous research shows that the intensity of reactance an individual exhibits is a direct function of variables such as the individual’s expectation to better their performance, the importance of the situation threatened and the implication of the defeat to the individual’s future performance.

The reactance theory predicts that when people encounter defeat in competitions, they will be motivated to renew their attempts to perform better in the subsequent events. Moreover, people will aggressively react to those situations that they perceive as the cause of loss and this makes them work harder to overcome the challenges, Jardine E. (2004). Although helplessness theory and reactance theory seem to predict opposite reactions to the loss of control experience, they still complement each other, Reisel W.

and Kopelman R. (1995). The individual’s response to a difficult situation is a function of three factors; the expectation control, the importance of the outcome over which control is lost and the amounts of exposure to outcome independence experience. This means that if an individual expects control that an experience of loss will engender reactance and the individual will attempt to reassert control. In such cases, facilitated performance on a subsequent situation is predicted. According to Reisel W.

and Kopelman R. (1995), the helplessness and reactance theories show that when a person expects control, his/her initial reaction to a loss of control will be one of the reactance. Additional experience of loss of control will make an individual to conclude that they lack control and this will lead to a feeling of helplessness. The stronger the initial expectation of control, the greater the amount of exposure to the response-outcome independence which is required before one considers himself/herself helpless.

The relationship between helplessness and reactance theory on the impact of significant loss on the subsequent performance of a team is influenced by the subjective importance of the outcome over which control can no longer be excited, Reisel W. and Kopelman R. (1995). The greater the importance of the outcome, the more the individual will be motivationally aroused to reestablish control when exposed to non-dependant situations between response and outcome. The link between reactance and helplessness theory is marked by the expectation of control.

This means that when people expect control over an outcome, the initial trials of helplessness will result in psychological reactance or increased attempts to maintain control. The more important the outcome, the more reactance the individual experiences and consequently the better the subsequent performance, Wortman C and Brehm J. (2008). Failure is a common experience among people. This research focused on the substantial loss on the subsequent performance and its effect in AFL teams. Although many people have conducted researches on failure at individual level, few have focused on the group responses to failure.

This research was concerned with the investigation of the impact of substantial loss on the subsequent performance of teams in the Australian Football League AFL. Various theories show the effect of failure on subsequent performance of people. The reactance theory and learned helplessness theory are the ones that were used in examining the effect of substantial loss on the subsequent performances of AFL teams in the years between 2007 and 2010.

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