Emotional impact of physical activity: emotions associated with competitive and non-competitive physical activity in primary education

Abstract

The practice of physical activity can generate positive and negative emotions, depending on the type of physical activity that is carried out. We present a quasi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test, whose aim is to compare the emotional impact that the practice of competitive and non-competitive physical activity in Physical Education produce. The POMS questionnaire (Profile of Mood States) (Gómez, 2015) was applied to analyze the depression, vigor, anger, tension and fatigue factors in a sample of 43 students, aged between 11 and 12 years (M = 11.3, SD = 1.2) in a 'concertada' school (private school with public funding) in the city of Burgos, Spain. The depression and anger factors were statistically significant when their differential score was compared between the practice of competitive and non-competitive physical activity, being these factors, associated with negative emotions, greater during the practice of competitive physical activity. We conclude that competitive physical activity could generate negative emotions in students.