Influence of Negative Social Media on Athletic Performance 

(2023)

 The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence negative social media content has on sports performance of student athletes. The participants will be female and male college students from the Basketball teams at Cal Poly Humboldt. The baseline stress level will be determined taking a saliva sample using noninvasive passive drool technique. To assess baseline performance, each player will shoot 40 free-throws. Thereafter the stressor is presented in form of negative social media postings about prior season performance. The brief fear of negative evaluation scale (Leary, 1983) will be used to determine the athlete’s level of sensitivity to social evaluation. Then cortisol level will be measured again followed by a second free-throw shooting sequence. We predict that athletic performance will decrease following exposure to negative social media. The impact negative social evaluation has is expected to vary because of the individual athlete's cortisol response and self-reported fear of social evaluations. The athletes will have the opportunity to learn about how they individually respond to the stress from social evaluation which may help players and coaches to determine whether to avoid social media before games.