Chapter 3 “Psyching up” and calming down: Anxiety in sport

Anxiety- latin ”angere” – “to choke”

- A state of “worry, apprehension, or tension that often occurs in the absence
of real or obvious danger.”

In sports psychology, Anxiety refers to an unpleasant emotion which is characterized

by vague but persistent feelings of apprehension and dread

COMPONENTS OF ANXIETY: Cognitive, Somatic and Behavioral

1. Cognitive Anxiety (Mental)
2. Somatic Anxiety (Physical)
3. Behavioral Anxiety

1. Cognitive Anxiety- “negative expectations and cognitive concern about one self,
the situation at hand and potential consequences.”

2. Somatic Anxiety- or bodily processes

- refers to the physical manifestation of anxiety.

3. Behavioral Anxiety- rapid speech delivery, tense facial expressions, changes in

communication patterns, restlessness etc.

ANXIETY, FEAR AND AROUSAL

➜ Fear - a brief emotional reaction to a stimulus that is perceived as threatening.
➜ Arousal - a diffuse state of bodily alertness or “readiness”
- Refers to a type of bodily energy which primes or prepares us for
emergency action.

In Psychology, “arousal” refers to a type of bodily energy which primes or prepares

us for emergency action.
Anxiety is believed to differ from fear in lasting longer (Buckworth and Dishman,
2002) and in tending to be more undifferentiated than fear—because people can be
anxious about something that is not physically present or immediately perceptible.
Anxiety is similar to a fear in some ways. Anxiety is elicited whenever people
interpret a particular person, event or situation as posing a threat to them in some
way.
Although the distinction between these two factors is often blurred in everyday life.

➜ Perception plays in the emotional experiences of elite athletes.

• it is not the amount of arousal that affects performance but the way in which such
arousal is interpreted.

➜ , G.Jones and Swain (1995) and Hanton and Jones (1999) showed that somatic
symptoms of anxiety can have either a facilitative effect or a debilitative effect on
sport performance depending on how the athlete perceives them.
 Debilitative anxiety interferes with performance.
 Facilitative anxiety is an anxiety that is beneficial to performance.

Ex.
Thus a performer who interprets sweaty palms as a sign of uncertainty is
experiencing debilitative anxiety.
Someone who regards similar symptoms as a sign of readiness to do well is
experiencing facilitative anxiety.

TYPES OF ANXIETY: STATE AND TRAIT

➜ State anxiety may be defined as “subjective, consciously perceived feelings of
tension and apprehension.
➜ Trait anxiety refers to a general disposition among people to feel anxious in
certain environmental situations.

Applied to sport, the concept of state anxiety may be used to describe situations in
which an athlete’s feelings of tension may change during a match.
On the other hand, a player who scores highly on trait anxiety may feel pessimistic
most of the time.
WHAT CAUSES ANXIETY IN ATHLETES?
• Perceived importance of the competition
- In general, the more importance is attached to a forthcoming competition by
an athlete, the more anxiety s/he is likely to experience in it.

• Predispositions: trait anxiety

- Many sport psychologists (e.g., Anshel, 1995) believe that athletes’ levels of
trait anxiety are important determinants of the amount of state anxiety which
they are likely to experience in a given situation. But, it is not valid to use a
personality trait as an “explanation” for a mental state. After all, one cannot
explain aggressive behaviour by saying that a person has an “aggressive”
personality.
• Attributions/expectations
- A tendency to attribute successful outcomes to external and unstable factors
(e.g., luck) and to attribute unsuccessful outcomes to internal and stable
factors (e.g., low levels of skill) is likely to induce anxiety in athletes.
Perceptions of audience expectations are also important determinants of
performance anxiety.
• Perfectionism
- Athletes who set impossibly high standards for their performances may feel
anxious when things fail to go smoothly for them. Interestingly, Frost and
Henderson (1991) discovered that athletes who displayed a significant
concern for their mistakes (which is associated with perfectionism) tended to
experience more anxiety than did less perfectionistic colleagues.
•Fear of failure
- Many athletes are indoctrinated to adopt a “win at all costs” attitude, which
ultimately makes them vulnerable to performance anxiety. If they believe that
their self-esteem is tied inextricably to what they achieve, they are especially
likely to become nervous at the prospect of defeat as it constitutes a threat to
their self-worth.
• Lack of confidence
- Some sport psychologists have speculated that athletes who have little
confidence in their own abilities are likely to experience high levels of anxiety
in competitive situations. This hypothesis is supported by research (e.g.,
Martin and Gill, 1991) which shows that runners who scored highly in self-
confidence reported experiencing little cognitive anxiety.
In summary, at least three conclusions have emerged from studying anxiety in
athletes. First, even the world’s best athletes get nervous before competition.
Second, many athletes and coaches believe that competitive performance is
determined significantly by the ability to control and channel one’s nervous energy
effectively. Finally, we have learned that anxiety tends to affect people at different
levels—via their thinking, feeling and behaviour.

MEASURING ANXIETY IN ATHLETES

Within sport psychology, measuring anxiety have focused largely on the cognitive
and somatic dimensions, with virtually no research available on the behavioural
dimension. The most popular tools for anxiety assessment have been self-report
scales probably as a result of the availability and convenience of these instruments
( R.ESmith, Smoll and Wiechman, 1998).

Physiological Measures
Spielberger (1966) proposed that anxiety states are “accompanied by or associated
with activation of the autonomic nervous system”. This activation results in such
typical symptoms of anxiety as elevated heart rate, increased blood pressure, fast
and shallow breathing, sweaty palms and tense musculature. If such indices could
be measured conveniently, they would facilitate research this area.

Here are five reasons why physiological measures of anxiety are relatively rare In
sport psychology:
1. There is no single, universally agreed physiological index of anxiety;
2. As athletes differ in the way in which they interpret autonomic arousal,
physiological measures of anxiety are of limited value;
3. Such measures assess arousal not anxiety;
4. Physiological indices of arousal are not highly intercorrelated; and
5. Physiological assessment of athletes is time-consuming and inconvenient.
Self-report Instruments
Most popular self-report instruments in sports psychology are:
1. Trait anxiety measures
a. Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT) - Martens 1977
b. Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS) – RE. Smith, Smoll and Schutz 1990
2. State anxiety tools
a. Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) – Martens, Burton,
Vealey, Bump and Smith 1990
b. Mental Readiness Form (MRF) – Krane 1994
c.
The “Sport Competition Anxiety Scale” (SCAT; Martens, 1977)
Sport Competition Anxiety Scale (SCAT) is a ten-item inventory which purports to
measure trait anxiety in sport performers. Parallel versions of this test are available
for children (aged 10-14 years) and for adults (of 15 years and above). Respondents
are required to indicate their agreement with each item by selecting their preferred
answer from the three categories of “hardly ever”,“sometimes” and “often”. Overall
test scores can range from 10 to 30.

The “Sport Anxiety Scale” (SAS; RE Smith et al., 1990)

Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS) is a sport-specific multidimensional test of cognitive and
somatic trait anxiety. It contains twenty-one items which are divided into three sub-
scales: somatic anxiety (nine items such as “I feel nervous”), worry (seven items
such as “I have self-doubts”) and a “concentration disruption” (five items such as “My
mind wanders during sport competition”) sub-scale.

The “Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2” (CSAI-2; Martens et al., 1990)

Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) is a test of state anxiety which
comprises twenty-seven items which are divided into three sub-scales (with each
containing nine items): cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety and self-confidence. The
“self-confidence” sub-scale is included in the test because a lack of confidence is
believed to be a sign of cognitive anxiety (ibid.). On a four-point scale (with 1=not at
all” and 4=very much so”), respondents are required to rate the intensity of their
anxiety experiences prior to competition.

AROUSAL/ANXIETY AND ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE

Ability to regulate one’s arousal level is a vital determinant of success in sport.
Endorsing this principle, many athletes and coaches have developed informal
methods of either energising themselves or lowering their arousal levels before
important competitions.

Theories of arousal/anxiety-performance relationships

Four main theories:
• Drive theory
• Inverted - U" hypothesis
• Catastrophe theory
• Conscious processing hypothesis
Drive theory -is regarded as a psychological state of arousal that is created by an
imbalance in the homeostatic mechanisms of the body and that impels the organism
to take ameliorative action.

Two types of drives

Primary drives - arise from the pursuit of basic biological needs such as (eating,
drinking and restoring homeostasis)
Secondary drives - are stimuli (earning money, winning titles)
Inverted-U” hypothesis - performance tends to be poor at low or high levels of
arousal but is best at intermediate levels of arousal
Dodson law - this law proposed that there is an optimal level of arousal for
performance on any task. Specifically, performance tends to be poor at low or high
levels of arousal but is best at intermediate levels of arousal.
Catastrophe theory
The cornerstone of catastrophe theory is the assumption that arousal may have
different effects on athletic performance depending on the prevailing level of
cognitive anxiety in the performer.
Based on this assumption, at least two predictions are possible (Gould et al., 2002).
Conscious processing hypothesis
The conscious processing hypothesis (Masters, 1992) was spawned by the well-
known “paralysis-by-analysis” phenomenon whereby skilled performance tends to
deteriorate whenever people try to exert conscious control over movements that had
previously been under automatic control
Conclusions about arousal/anxiety-performance relationship
Three general conclusions have emerged from the preceding theories and research
(Weinberg and Gould, 1999).
1. Anxiety and arousal
2. Increases in physiological arousal and cognitive state anxiety
3. The interaction between arousal and cognitive anxiety
WHAT CAUSES CHOKING IN SPORT?
In Contemporary sports psychology, choking is Regarded a an anxiety-based
attentional difficulty rather than as a personality problem. The propensity to choke is
not a character flaw but a cognitive problem arising from an interaction between
anxiety and attention.
Two main theoretical accounts of choking that have been postulated in recent
years, According to Graydon (2002):
Self-consciousness approach
Processing efficiency theory
Self-consciousness approach – (Baumeister, 1984; Baumeister and Showers, 1986)
– when people experience a great deal of pressure to perform well they tend to think
more about themselves and the importance of the event in which they are competing
than they would normally.
- According to some athletes this unraveling of skill may be caused by thinking
too much as one gets older.
Processing efficiency theory – (Eysenck and Calvo, 1992)
– Suggests that anxious athletes may try to maintain their level of
performance by investing extra effort in it.
– Reducing/reduction of the processing and storage capacity of working
memory, hence reducing the resources available for a given task.
In summary, we have learned that choking under pressure is a persuasive problem
in sports. Unfortunately, no consensus has been reached as yet about the theoretical
mechanisms that cause it. Nevertheless, most theories of this phenomenon agree
that anxiety impairs performance by inducing the athlete to think too much , thereby
regressing to an earlier stage of skill acquisition.

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY IN SPORT: “CHOKING” UNDER PRESSURE

Anxiety- is derived from the Latin word “angere” which means “to choke”.
Chocking under pressure- whereby athletic performance is suddenly impaired by
intense anxiety.
Choking- widely known in athletic performance that it has a variety of sport-specific
synonyms, such as:
* icing (in basketball)
* dartitis (in darts)
* yips (in golf)
 Chocking is especially prevalent among performers of precision sports such as golf,
tennis, snooker, darts and cricket.
Athletes who admitted publicly that they have choked psychologically in certain
pressure situations.
- John Daly (golf)
- Rod Laver and John McEnroe (both tennis)
- Lee Trevino and Tom Watson

Chocking is not only debilitating but can affect athletes over a long period of time.

Ex:
- Ian Woosnam, A Welsh golfer, he had suffered from the “yips” for three years.
- Eric Bristow, who won the world darts championship five times, choked so badly at
times that he could not release the dart from his fingers it took him years to
overcome this problem
- Patsy Fagan, had to abandon the sport because of his failure to overcome anxiety
problems which affected his cueing action (Dobson, 1998).

In summary, the preceding examples show clearly that choking is a potentially

significant problem for many athletes. But what do we really know about the nature
and causes of this problem?

What is choking?
- Refer to a phenomenon in which athletic performance is impaired suddenly by
anxiety.

- It involves “the failure of normally expert skill under pressure” (Masters, 1992,
p. 344) or “the occurrence of suboptimal performance under pressure
conditions” (Baumeister and Showers, 1986, p. 362).
*What makes this mental state intriguing psychologically
- To explain, in the pressure situations that prompt choking, the more effort the
athlete puts into his or her performance, the worse it becomes. Put simply, choking
occurs paradoxically because people try too hard to perform well.

Symptoms of choking
 Tense muscles, shaky limbs, rapid heart and pulse rates, shortness of breath,
butterflies in the stomach, “racing” thoughts and feelings of panic.
 In addition, choking may involve the sensation that one cannot complete the
stroke or movement that one intends.
Ex: golfers who suffer from the “yips” often feel themselves getting tense over the
ball and cannot complete a putting stroke due to interference from sudden
involuntary movements. Likewise, bowlers in cricket who suffer from anxiety attacks
suddenly feel as if they cannot release the ball.

Choking reaction may also be characterized by a tiny muscular spasm that occurs
just as the stroke is about to be executed—even in practice situations.
- For example, Eric Bristow, a world champion in darts for three consecutive
years, revealed that “I had it so bad I was even getting it when I was
practising… It took me six or seven years to sort it out” (cited in Dobson,
1998, p. 16).

Before concluding this section, it should be noted that choking seems to occur more
frequently in untimed individual sports (e.g., golf, tennis) than in timed team-games
(e.g., football, rugby). As yet, however, the precise reasons for this phenomenon
remain unknown.
CONTROLLING ANXIETY IN SPORT: COPING WITH PRESSURE SITUATIONS
-Give the ubiquity of performance anxiety in sport,it is not suprising that psychology
have devised a variety of strategies in effort to “REDUCE ATHLETES’PRE -
COMPETITING ANXIETY LEVELS.

EXPLAIN TWO KEY POINTS

•First,we must distiguish between SITUATIONS and PREASURE in sport -as
athletes need to be trained to understand that they do not automatically experience
anxiety in pressure situations
Second,we need to understand what effective anxiety control or coping involeves
psychologically. Psychological effort to master,reduce or
tolerate pressure

THIS STRATEGY KNOWN AS:

PROBLEM-FUCOSED COPING -
Which involves aconfronting the pressure situation directly
EMOTION-FUCOSED COPING -Which involves actively changing one’s
interpretation and reaction to the pressure situation.

(GORDIN,1998;WILLIAMS AND HARRI,1998)

Problem focused coping techniques are advisable when preparing for controllable
sources of pressure where as situation is uncontrollable are usually more
appropriate when the pressure situation is uncontrollable.
UNDERSTANDING TO EXPERIENCE OF PRESSURE
Psychologist say we experience pressure and anxiety when we feel threatened by
current or impending situations.Preasure is subjective imperpatation pf objective
circumstances.We can change our reaction to pressure by restructing it in our minds
as a challenge to our ability rather than a treat to our well-being.
JACK NIKLAUS that feeling nervous and excited is the difference between winning
and not winning.(cited in Gilleece,1996,p.7)
BOX 3.6 COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURE IN ACTION:TURNING A PRESSURE
SITUATION INTO A CHALLENGE - The
purpose of this exercise is to show you how to use a technique called cognitive
restructuring to turn a feared pressure situation into a manageable challenge(based
on morel,1998)
Example this situation by finishing the following sentence:
“I HATE THE PRESSURE OF A”
EX:I hate the pressure of facing exams when I have not studied for them.
“I LOVE THE CHALLENGE OF”.
EX:I love the challenge of preparing in the same way for every serve no matter what
the score is in the match.
No longer see It as something to fear as something which challenge your skills.

BECOMING MORE AWARE OF ANXIETY:INTERPRETING AROUSAL SIGNALS

CONSTRUCTIVELY
-athletes need to be educated to understand that anxiety is not necessary a bad
thing.merely a sign that they care about the results of what they are doing.They must
learn to perceive somatic arousal as an essential prerequisite of a good
performance.

Using physical relaxation techniques: lowering shoulders, slowing down and

breathing deeply.

In the heat of competition, athletes often speed up their behavior, leading to anxiety
and stress. To combat this, it is essential to encourage them to slow down and relax
whenever tension strikes. Physical relaxation techniques like progressive muscular
relaxation can be helpful in sports like golf or tennis, where there is a lot of “break
time” available. However, this approach may not be suitable for fast-paced activities
like hockey.

Relaxation tapes are often recommended for athletes with excessive anxiety, but
they are rarely effective. Critical thinking questions should be asked about the effects
of anxiety on cognitive, somatic, and behavioral components, as well as the
differences between situations where athletes might listen to a relaxation tape and
competitive situations where they become anxious.
Giving oneself specific instructions can help athletes focus on immediate challenges
rather than potential negative consequences. By asking to post themselves, “What
exactly do I have to do right now?”, athletes can avoid confusing the facts of the
situation with an anxious interpretation of those facts. When athletes experience
pressure, they should give themselves specific commands that help them focus on
actions they can control.

Adhering to pre-performance routines, or systematic sequences of preparatory

thoughts and actions, can help athletes concentrate optimally before executing
important skills. These routines serve as a cocoon against the adverse effects of
anxiety. Constructive thinking involves encouraging oneself to encourage their efforts
and instruct them on what to do next.

Simulation training is another effective way to develop mental toughness by

practicing under simulated pressure situations in training. For example, the
Australian women’s hockey team practiced under adversity such as gamesmanship
and adverse umpiring decisions during their gold-medal success in the 1988
Olympics.

In summary, athletes can learn to cope with pressure situations by using four
psychological strategies: believing that pressure lies in the eye of the beholder,
learning that systematic preparation tends to reduce pressure through simulation
training and mental rehearsal, using self-talk techniques to guide themselves through
pressure situations, and deepening routines and using physical relaxation
procedures in accordance with the temporal demands of the sport.
UNRESOLVED ISSUES AND NEW DIRECTIONS IN RESEARCH ANXIETY IN
ATHLETES

Despite a long tradition of research on anxiety in athletes, many issues remain

unresolved in this field. Identification of these issues can help us to outline areas for
further research on anxiety in sport performers

First, the fact that researchers tend to use terms such as arousal, fear, anxiety and
stress interchangeably
Second, idiographic research designs to anxiety in sport.
Third, little research has been conducted to date on the question of how cognitive
anxiety and physiological arousal interact to affect performance in sport.
Fourth, apart from anecdotal insights yielded by athletes and coaches, virtually
nothing is known about the effects of emotions like anger or revenge on sport
performance.
Finally, surprisingly little research has been conducted on the anxiety experienced by
athletes close to and during competitive performance.