Dr. Kentaro Fujita

And so if that were true, and again, that's not true for every sport, but if that is true for a particular sport, you might do better if you're in a more promotion motivational state when you are on offense and a more prevention motivational state when you're on defense.

And if you get that mixed up, you won't be as effective.

So when you get the match, research suggests that you enhance performance.

But if you get a mismatch, you kind of have like –

not quite grooving, and you won't perform as well.

You're just not feeling right.

You're not feeling fit.

There is research on regulatory fit, and it suggests if you can get task motivation fit, if you can get yourself in the right motivation for the task at hand, you'll have enhanced performance.

Now, the reason why I bring this up is because research that I've conducted with my colleague Abigail Schoeller and David Mealy, we've shown that people have some insight into this.

They know there are certain tasks that it's better to be promotion on this task and it's better to be prevention on this task.

And they also kind of know the thought processes that they have to engage in in order to get there.

So are you going to be thinking about gains or are you thinking about losses?

Are you going to be more in a sort of a –

again, security advancement or security mindset, they can tell us that if I think this way, if I think about security or think about advancement, I will do better on this task, which suggests that people have some insight into what, not just the amount of motivation, but the right type of motivation to do well.

And so part of what you're talking about warming up might be that people are sort of

trying to cobble together the right set of thoughts to get the right motivational type, not just the right amount, but the right type in order to do the task at hand.

There may also be an additional complexity with the amount because we know not enough motivation is not good, but we also know too much motivation is bad.

And so like the U-shaped functions, you kind of want to be in the middle for ideal.

You want to be amped up to be able to do the task at hand.

But if you have too much, you might choke because it means so much to you that you just overthink things, right?