The Impact of an Odor on Free Throw Performance

By pairing an athlete's positive feeling performance with a pleasant scent, known as odor-emotional conditioning (Herz, 2007), and then using that scent under a stressful condition, it was hypothesized in the current study that the scent should help the athlete to perceive the stressful situation with less intrusion than the non-paired or odor only groups. In this study the ambient scent of orange was paired with imagery of successful free throws. There were 27 participants aged 17-27 years, from competitive basketball leagues. An anxiety producing situation called a 'gotcha' was used with each participant. A 2x3 split-plot ANOVA was used to analyze the number of successful and missed free throws between the three groups. Inductive content analysis was used to analyze the verbatim data obtained from the written response and interview. The split-plot ANOVA revealed no statistical significance. The main effect of group membership was not statistically significant (p = .534), nor was changes from the "first 10" to the "gotcha" conditions statistically significant (p = .344/.866). However, an examination of the pattern of decreased successful free throws indicates a possible trend. The content analysis revealed difference among participant groups in the two General Dimensions found: Performance Barriers and Appropriate Performance state. Participants paired with the scent were more likely to report an Appropriate Performance State and fewer Performance Barriers during the 'gotcha' portion of the free throw shooting. Implications of this study show that odor-emotional conditioning may be a useful technique for improving performance

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