The emotional imagery for the empowerment of sportsmanlike performances: An experiment in ice-skating

This survey aims at developing a performance empowerment technique, in particular for the figure ice-skating. This specific sport has been chosen because of its strong expressive force, and it could be compared with dance. An imagery text, called Emotional Imagery, has been written in order to test the athletes before their performances. In addition to some self-report measures evaluations and choreographic movements analyses, a group of judges evaluates these performances. Obviously, the differences between the basic performance and the performance in the Emotional Imagery condition must be analyzed, in order to check the effective empowerment effects. Finally, each athlete is given a feedback on the evaluations. The Emotional Imagery is expected to effectively empower the interpretation part without omitting the technical part, which could indirectly be improved.