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PART IV
Mental and Emotional States
In this part we discuss the implications of a person's emotional state for performance. The chapters provide a sampling of ways to alter states in order to influence performance.
Concentrating on perceptions of self-confidence, in Chapter 8 we review studies on achievement motivation, career development, health and exercise behavior, anxiety disorders, and sport and motor performance.
In Chapter 9, we focus primarily on hypnosis, but we also discuss restricted environmental stimulation (REST) and revisit issues concerned with meditation and sleep learning. For hypnosis, the chapter evaluates claims made about its effectiveness in such areas as pain control, strength, learning, sensory acuity, time perception, and memory. For REST, we evaluate the implications of a number of experiments that explore its effects on relaxation, learning, endurance, and so on. For this second look by the committee at the meditation literature, we focus particularly on Transcendental Meditation, evaluating the results obtained from meta-analyses performed on numerous experiments. Finally, for sleep learning, we consider recent work, which was stimulated by the committee's first report.