From NPR: The Power of Positive Perception

Can You Think Your Way To That Hole-In-One? http://wamu.org/programs/morning_edition/12/04/18/can_you_think_your_way_to_that_hole_in_one Listen to the entire report here: http://wamu.org/audio-player?nid=52279 Excerpts below:Psychologists at Purdue University have come up with an interesting twist on the old notion of the power of positive thinking. Call it the power of positive perception: They've shown that you may be able to improve your golf game by believing the hole you're aiming for is larger than it really is. Jessica Witt, who studies how perception and performance are related, decided to look at golf — specifically, how the appearance of the hole changes depending on whether you're playing well or poorly..... "These effects aren't specific to athletes," she says. "We find them in everybody, in all kinds of tasks. So if you have to walk up a hill to get to work, if you're tired or low energy or wearing a heavy backpack, that hill looks steeper or a distance looks farther. So it's apparent in everybody, not just in athletes." Witt says along with a positive perception comes confidence — if the hill doesn't seem too steep, or the golf hole appears bigger than it really is, that altered perception gives you confidence in your abilities. Tim Woodman, who heads the School of Sport, Health and Exercise Science at Bangor University in Wales, says for athletes at least, just having more confidence doesn't guarantee top performance. He says that confidence is important, but self-doubt can help, too. "If you're good at something but you doubt yourself a little bit, you're more likely to try that bit harder," he says. "Whereas if you are confident and you know you're very good at something, you might just slack off a little bit and move into some sort of cruise control, and then actually not perform very well." Woodman says top athletes find the right balance between confidence and uncertainty to perform at their peak. Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.