Introduction and Context
More than 600,000 Canadian adolescents drop out of sport each year – and miss out on the many benefits that sport offers. Compared to boys, girls are up to six times more likely to drop out of sport, and body image factors are often identified as reasons for drop out. Also, adolescent girls are often described as less competent in fundamental sport skills, which leads to poor experiences and lower participation compared to boys. However, it is possible that girls are not less competent in sport than boys, but are socialized to attend to and monitor their body appearance which limits their capacity to effectively perform sport skills. Specifically, a vigilant monitoring and focus on body appearance (called body surveillance) is thought to be detrimental to foundational sport abilities. If attention is on the body, it is not on the appropriate sport task and this attention bias negatively impacts performance. There is tremendous evidence, including our own publications, showcasing the pervasiveness of body-focused stimuli and cues in youth sport – from uniform fit, spectator comments, coach feedback, teammate comparisons, and narratives of idealized athletic body types central to success.Recent public discourse from the Olympics and Paralympic Games show athletes are the targets of body-focused stimuli (e.g., Simone Biles’ hair; Ilona Maher’s body mass index; Thomas Ceccon’s abs; Christine Raleigh Crossley’s questioned disability status) and poorly-designed uniforms (e.g., high-cut Nike bodysuit for women track athletes). These factors may have impacted the quality of their performances. Body surveillance is highly prevalent in sport, especially for girls/women, but relatively untested in boys/men. In the current proposal, we tested the effect of body surveillance on cognitive and motor tasks that are integral to sport performance and participation.
The OVERARCHING GOAL of this program of research was to test the associations among body surveillance, body-related self-conscious emotions, and cognitive and motor performance. The main questions: Is heightened attentional focus on the body detrimental to cognitive and motor performance? Are there gender differences? To achieve this goal, we developed measures of body-related emotions that are central to the experience of body surveillance. We then conducted one survey study and three experimental studies to test the impact of body surveillance on cognitive and motor performance using tasks that emulate foundational sport skills (e.g., movement time, error/accuracy, reaction time, attention capacity).
Sport leaders, including coaches, trainers, parents, and administrators, should be interested in this work because it documents an important inherent feature in sport that may be detrimentally impacting athletes yet can be modified – namely, a focus on body appearance. We argue that body surveillance is a “silent” influence in sport that is not well-understood.
Methods
First, we developed and tested measures of body-related envy and embarrassment using a multi-step process with nearly 1400 adolescent athletes. Second, we examined the impact of negative body-related emotions on attention using survey-based research. Third, a series of experimental studies were conducted to test body surveillance impact on cognitive and motor performance, adaptation, and retention/learning. In one study, body-related embarrassment or pride were elicited prior to the motor task measuring movement time and accuracy. In a second study, body surveillance was cued from waist circumference and skinfold/body fat measures prior to the motor task. Arousal/affect and emotions were measured using galvanic skin response and facial expression analyses. In a third study, negative body-related self-conscious emotions (shame, guilt, embarrassment, envy), attention, and performance were measured daily. A total of 292 active girls/women and body/men were involved in these studies ranging from 13 to 30 years of age with diverse sport histories and participation.
Key Findings and Implications
We developed valid and reliable measures of body-related envy and embarrassment:
- Vani, M., Lucibello, K., & Sabiston, C. M. (2023). Development and validation of the body-related embarrassment scale (BREM). Current Psychology, DOI : 10.1007/s12144-023-05183-y.
- Lucibello, K. M., Pila, E., Pritchard, E. M., & Sabiston, C. M. (2022). Validation of the Body-related envy scale (BREV) in adolescent girl athletes. Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, 11, 477-493.
We found that body-related shame negatively impacts attention capacity among adolescents:
- Vani, M. F., Lucibello, K. M., Welsh, T., & Sabiston, C. M. (2023). Body-related shame disrupts attentional focus over time in adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 95, 1520–1527.
We also found general evidence that body-focused cues negatively impact motor performance.
For example, the negative body-focused emotion of embarrassment led to poorer adaptation and that there were gender differences. Men demonstrated more immediate negative effects on adaptation whereas women demonstrated impact such that they had worse later adaptation and retention. These results were recently published:
- Bek J, Sabiston CM, Thibodeau DE, Welsh TN. Gender-specific effects of self-objectification on visuomotor adaptation and learning. Body Image. 2024 Sep 26;51:101795. doi: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2024.101795.
Furthermore, body-focused stimuli increased a stress and negative emotion response that led to less accuracy on the motor task in both women and men. These results will be written up for publication.
Finally, adolescents higher in body surveillance had longer overall reaction times and were more detrimentally affected by the task compared to participants lower in body surveillance:
- Sabiston, C.M., Vani, M., Murray, R., & Welsh, T. N. (2023). Body surveillance, but not body-related emotions, impact cognitive and motor performance among adolescents. Journal of Exercise, Movement, and Sport, 54 (1).
These findings collectively show that body-focused cues are detrimental to underlying cognitive and motor performance outcomes.
Strengths and Limitations
The strengths of this work include the rigorous development of appropriate measurement tools for long-term use in research and practice. The study designs, including experimental tests of motor performance tasks that are relevant to sport contexts, were appropriate. The wide-ranging age of participants with diverse sport experience and inclusion of girls/women and boys/men are additional strengths. The limitations include the purposeful sampling that limits generalizability, using tasks that are not direct assessments of sport skills, and the limited inclusion of individuals identifying beyond the gender binary.
Conclusions and Next Steps
These findings collectively show that body-focused cues are detrimental to underlying cognitive and motor performance outcomes. The findings advance conceptual, measurement, and theory in body image, link sport-related disciplines of sports psychology and motor control and learning, and offer insights for practice. Coaches (and sport parents/guardians) have the most to benefit from these findings because sport culture needs to change so that less emphasis is placed on body-focused appearance cues. These sport leaders are in the best position to make the biggest change by reducing such cues through thoughtful and intentional communication that does not focus on appearance and positive role modelling. Sport administrators can benefit from designing and/or allocating uniforms that de-emphasize the body shape and appearance and are comfortable, so they are not a constant focus for athletes. Administrators can also reduce appearance-focused media (i.e., posters, print material) in training and performance centres. Future explorations of ways to reduce the impact of social media commentary for training and competition would be valuable. Finally, athletes can benefit from an awareness of body-focused stimuli and attention bias that may be damaging to their performances. Future efforts are needed to understand how to help athletes build effective coping resources.