Personality, psychological states and heart rate in novice and expert parachutists

Mindful Sensation Seeking: An Examination of the Protective Influence of Selected Personality Traits on Risk Sport-Specific Stress

Stress often has a negative influence on sports performance. Stress-induced decreases in performance can be especially disastrous for risk sports athletes, who often put their life at risk when practicing their sport. Therefore, it is of great importance to identify protective factors in stressful situations in risk sports. On average, risk sports athletes score extremely high on the personality trait sensation seeking. At the same time, theoretical considerations about dispositional mindfulness suggest that mindful athletes can handle stress more effectively. The main goal of this experiment is to examine the influence of sensation seeking and mindfulness on the stress response to a risk sport-specific stressor. To induce stress, 88 male students completed the Heidelberg Risk Sport-Specific Stress Test (HRSST) which utilizes fear of falling as the stressful event during a climbing exercise. Psychological (anxiety) and physiological (cortisol) responses were measured at multiple time points before and after the HRSST to determine the severity of the stress response. In reaction to the stressor, a significant increase in self-reported state anxiety, but no significant increase in cortisol were observed. The mindfulness subscale external observation correlated positively with anxiety in the climbing wall, sensation seeking and the anxiety scales after the jump correlated negatively and sensation seeking predicted anxiety subscales after the jump in hierarchical regression analyses. However, mindfulness did not predict anxiety measures. Neither sensation seeking nor mindfulness correlated significantly with cortisol levels. The results suggest that high sensation seekers perceive a risk sport-specific stressor as less stressful. The missing physiological response might be explained by the Cross-Stressor-Adaptation-Hypothesis and particularities of the sample. Good internal observers might be especially aware of their need of stimulation and new experiences, which in turn might explain the higher experience-seeking scores. Future studies should further examine the role of mindfulness in stressful situations and the interaction of its subscales with sensation seeking. The current experiment offers new possibilities for adjoining research fields at the interface between sports sciences, psychology and medicine: The findings can be transferred to high risk professions such as police officers, firefighters and military forces (e.g., for selection processes or for interventions).

Cortisol and behavioral reaction of low and high sensation seekers differ in responding to a sport-specific stressor

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES

Sensation seeking is closely related to practicing high-risk sports. This domain offers individuals an opportunity to achieve an increased level of arousal. Moreover, stress reactivity implies interindividual differences in the capacity to respond to a stressor. The purpose of this study was to examine whether high sensation seekers (HSS) compared to low sensation seekers (LSS) experience lower levels of stress on a physiological and psychological basis. Stress was induced in a sport-specific experimental paradigm with a climbing task through a jump into the rope.

METHODS

Two extreme groups (n = 28 male athletes) were examined in a mixed-factorial design (between: HSS vs. LSS; within: repeated measurements of several variables related to stress reactivity - cortisol, heart rate, anxiety).

RESULTS

In response to the stressor HSS compared to LSS released a significantly lower amount of cortisol and needed less time for the climbing task. Heart rate and anxiety were not significant.

CONCLUSIONS

Individuals seem to react physiologically differently to a sport-specific stressor, depending on their level of sensation seeking. HSS seem to be less strained, and seem to perform better. These findings might be relevant not only for the evaluation of (sport-) psychological interventions but also for other contexts (e.g., special forces).

Adrenaline Instead of Amphetamine-Replacing Psychoactive Substances with Parachute Jumps

The "Adrenaline Instead of Amphetamine" program was launched by Gdańsk's MONAR association-a center for drug treatment. The purpose of the program was to show some alternatives to using psychoactive substances and to propose replacing these anti-medical behaviors with parachuting. The treatment effectiveness in this center is about 30%, and the program's effectiveness was 80%.

The impact of personality traits and professional experience on police officers' shooting performance under pressure

We explored the impact of professional experience and personality on police officers' shooting performance under pressure. We recruited: (1) regular officers, (2) officers wanting to join a specialised arrest unit (AU) (expected to possess more stress-resistant traits; pre-AU) and (3) officers from this unit (expected to also possess more professional experience; AU) (all male). In Phase 1, we determined personality traits and experience. In Phase 2, state anxiety, shot accuracy, decision-making (shoot/don't shoot), movement speed and gaze behaviour were measured while officers performed a shooting test under low and high pressure. Results indicate minimal differences in personality among groups and superior performance of AU officers. Regression analyses showed that state anxiety and shooting performance under high pressure were first predicted by AU experience and second by certain personality traits. Results suggest that although personality traits attenuate the impact of high pressure, it is relevant experience that secures effective performance under pressure. Practitioner Summary: To obtain information for police selection and training purposes, we let officers who differed in personality and experience execute a shooting test under low and high pressure. Outcomes indicate that experience affected anxiety and performance most strongly, while personality traits of thrill- and adventure-seeking and self-control also had an effect.

The Healthy Heart: Lessons from Nature's Elite Athletes

The incidence of cardiovascular disease in humans is more than three times that of many wild and domestic mammals despite nearly identical heart morphologies and responses to exercise. A survey of mammalian species from 0.002-kg shrews to 43,000-kg whales shows that the human heart is more dog-like than cat-like and that neither body size nor longevity accounts for the relative vulnerability to cardiovascular disease. Rather, a major difference is daily activity patterns, which may underlie the comparatively healthy hearts of wild mammals.

Alexithymia determines the anxiety experienced in skydiving

BACKGROUND

High-risk activities have typically been explored within a sensation seeking framework. They may, however, allow those with emotional difficulties to experience and regulate their emotions.

METHODS

Skydivers (n=87) completed anxiety and heart rate data four times on a single day before and after a skydive.

RESULTS

A 2 (group: alexithymic; non alexithymic) x 4 (time) ANOVA with repeated measures on the second factor revealed a significant alexithymia x time interaction, F(2.27, 192.60)=45.48, p<.001, eta(2)=.35. Anxiety fluctuated significantly more for alexithymic skydivers than it did for their non alexithymic counterparts. This interaction was not mirrored by heart rate. The relationship between alexithymia and anxiety remained significant when accounting for sensation seeking.

LIMITATIONS

The results leave open interpretations that are based on anhedonia, which was not controlled for.

CONCLUSIONS

Alexithymic individuals may find, in the high-risk domain, an environment that satisfies their emotion regulation needs.

Habituation of P3a and P3b brain potentials in men engaged in extreme sports

Do person characteristics determine when novel, attention-grabbing stimuli loose their novelty? The aim of the present study was to investigate habituation of the visual event-related potentials (ERP) P3a and P3b in men that (1) were engaged in extreme sports, (2) had extremely high scores on the Impulsivity Sensation Seeking scale of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ), yet were not engaged in extreme sports, or (3) had extremely low scores on ZKPQ. The results showed that P3a habituated significantly more in extreme sporters than in the other groups. The same was not found in comparison of the high and the low ZKPQ scorers. There were not differences between the groups in overall amplitude. It is concluded that ERP habituation may be more relevant than mere amplitude to the sensation seeking trait in extreme sporters, and that they differ from others in ERPs related to automatic alerting-related processes, not controlled cognitive processing.

Sensation seeking and the aversive motivational system

Sensation seeking (SS) has traditionally been viewed as a phenomenon of the appetitive motivational system. The limited SS research exploring contributions from the aversive motivational system reveals greater anxious reactivity to dangerous activities among low sensation seekers. The present study extends this line of work by comparing levels of fear and anxiety during anticipation of predictable and unpredictable aversive stimuli across high- and low-SS groups. Low sensation seekers displayed greater fear-potentiated startle (FPS) to predictable aversive stimuli, and only those low on SS showed FPS and skin conductance response effects during experimental contexts in which aversive stimuli were delivered unpredictably. Findings implicate enhanced apprehensive anticipation among those low on SS as a potential deterrent for their participation in intense and threatening stimulus events.

Sensation seeking and startle modulation by physically threatening images

The potential moderating effect of sensation seeking on anxious reactivity to threatening experiences was assessed using the affective modulation of startle-blink paradigm. Startle blinks, as measured by electromyographic (EMG) activity in response to loud (100 dB) white-noise stimuli, were elicited during the presentation of positive, neutral, and threatening visual images. Unlike participants low in sensation seeking who showed blink potentiation during threatening versus neutral images, participants high in sensation seeking showed equal magnitudes of startle to neutral and threatening images. The results suggest that individuals high compared with low on sensation seeking are less anxiously reactive to physically threatening visual stimuli. No attenuation in startle magnitude was elicited by positive images among low or high sensation seekers suggesting that the positive images employed in the current study were not arousing enough to activate the appetitive arousal system.