Self-Generated Emotions and Their Influence on Sprint Performance: An Investigation of Happiness and Anxiety

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of self-generated emotions on sprinting times within the frameworks of Lazarus's (1991b, 2000b) cognitive-motivational-relational theory and Frederickson's (2001) broaden-and-build theory. Using self-generated emotions as an emotion induction method, 44 participants were asked to recall personal emotional episodes before sprinting and all participants took part in 3 emotion induction conditions: happiness, anxiety, and an emotion-neutral state. The results of 2 experiments indicated that the performance in the happiness condition was significantly greater compared to the anxiety condition and the emotion-neutral condition.