Emotional intensity in the class of Physical Education depending on the victory: cooperation-opposition games

Abstract

Emotions constantly determine the human behaviour, reason why they cannot be separated from the educational context, being the emotional education necessary for the integral development of students. The subject of Physical Education is generative of playful motor situations and offers an unequalled possibility to create emotional experiences by the use of motor games. In this way, it arises a huge pedagogic interest for knowing the specific characteristics of emotions. The aims of this study were to analyze the emotional experience caused by the cooperation-opposition domain and to analyze the influence of the competition variable in the type of emotional experience in the cooperation-opposition domain. The participants were 107 students of Primary Education who, after playing four cooperation-opposition games, completed an ad hoc instrument of emotional knowledge by emotional faces with positive and negative emotions (joy, happyness, humour, love, sadness, fear, rejection and anger). Results showed that this domain was generating a bigger positive emotional intensity and that winning or losing the game could influence in the emotional experience, being more intense the positive emotions when winning and the negative emotions when losing.