ANXIETY

Arousal
• Arousal may be defined as ‘a general physiological and
psychological activation varying on a continuum from deep sleep
to intense excitement’(Gould & Krane, 1992).
• When we are bored, relaxed or asleep, we are in a state of low
arousal. When excited, angry or anxious, we are in a state of high
arousal. You can see from this that being in a state of high or low
arousal is not in itself necessarily a pleasant or unpleasant
experience. On the other hand, anxiety is by definition an
unpleasant sensation.
• Arousal levels directly related to
autonomic nervous system (HR, BP, skin
conductivity, and respiration)
• Weinberg & Gould (1995) have offered the
following definition of anxiety: ‘a negative
emotional state with feelings of nervousness,
worry and apprehension associated with activation
or arousal of the body. We can thus think of
anxiety as an unpleasant state of high arousal.
• Anxiety is a normal human emotion that
everyone experiences at times. Many
people feel anxious, or nervous, when
faced with a problem at work, before
taking a test, or making an important
decision.
• 'A negative reaction of a performer to
stress, often leading to over arousal'
• Predisposition to perceive environmental
situations as threatening
‘Anxiety occurs where there is a
substantial imbalance between the
individual’s perception of their ability
and their perception of the demands
and importance of the situation’.
 Types
• Cognitive Anxiety
• Somatic Anxiety
• State Anxiety
• TraitAnxiety
Cognitive Anxiety

• Martens et al (1990) distinguished

between two aspects of anxiety.
• Cognitive anxiety refers to the anxious
thoughts that accompany somatic anxiety.
Anxious thinking involves worries, self-
doubts and images of losing and
humiliation.
Cognitive Anxiety

• When a sports person may think about

concerns of underachieving from
unpleasant thoughts.
• Often the stage before somatic anxiety.
• Often experience problems with
concentration replaces mental images of
success with failure.
Somatic Anxiety
• When we are anxious, we experience the physiological
changes associated with high arousal, including
increased heart rate and blood pressure, ‘butterflies’ in
the stomach, faster breathing and flushed face. We call
the experience of physiological changes associated with
anxiety somatic anxiety (from the Greek soma meaning
body).
• Result of a performers negative perception of the
body’s physiological reactions to stress.
• Due to the reaction of their body to stress the
performer
• worries more.
• Likely to have a queasy stomach and increased
sweating.
• We can measure somatic anxiety directly by
physiological means, or indirectly by self-rating
inventories. Direct physiological measuresinclude
urinalysis, galvanic skin response (GSR) and
blood pressure testing. Elevated levels of certain
hormones released when we are anxious (such
as adrenalin) can be detected in urine. We also
tend to sweat more when anxious. This can be
detected by a GSR meter, which measures the
electrical conductivity of the skin – the more we
sweat, the better conductor our skin becomes.
Our blood pressure also increases when we are
anxious, and this can be measured by a
sphygmomanometer.
State Anxiety Spielberger (1966)
• State anxiety describes the experience of
unpleasant feelings when confronted with
specific situations, demands or a particular
object or event. State anxiety arises when the
person makes a mental assessment of some
type of threat. When the object or situation that
is perceived as threatening goes away, the
person no longer experiences anxiety. Thus,
state anxiety refers to a temporary condition in
response to some perceived threat.
• State anxiety can be defined as a temporary
disturbing emotional arousal as a result of
recognition of a disturbing stimulus. A person
usually recognizes that there is an unpleasant
event of a certain kind and experiences
symptoms of state anxiety as a result of
facing such an event.
• The athletes emotional state at any given
time - variable from situation to situation
• State anxiety refers to the emotional state
of anxiety (cognitive and somatic), typically
experienced prior to and during
ompetition. Martens et al (1990) have
produced an updated questionnaire, the
Competitive State Anxiety Inventory–2
(CSAI–2), based on the SCAT, which
seeks to measure state anxiety before
competition.
• Many people experience anxiety before
speaking in public. For most people, these
feelings of anxiety start before they begin
speaking, continue during the speech but
subside immediately after the speech
ends. This is an example of state anxiety. 
Trait Anxiety

• Trait anxiety refers to anxiety as an aspect

of personality. A person high in trait
anxiety will be frequently anxious, almost
irrespective of the situation.
• Eysenck believed that some people are
generally more anxious and moody than
others because they are genetically
programmed to react more to potential
threats in their environment.
• Martens et al (1977) developed a self-rating
inventory called the Sport Competition
Anxiety Test (SCAT), designed to measure
trait anxiety related to sport.
• Like state anxiety, trait anxiety arises in
response to a perceived threat, but it
differs in its intensity, duration and the
range of situations in which it occurs. Trait
anxiety refers to the differences between
people in terms of their tendency to
experience state anxiety in response to
the anticipation of a threat.
• People with a high level of trait anxiety
experience more intense degrees of state
anxiety to specific situations than most
people do and experience anxiety toward
a broader range of situations or objects
than most people. Thus, trait anxiety
describes a personality characteristic
rather than a temporary feeling.
• People with trait anxiety tend to regularly
experience excessive worry and other anxiety
symptoms in anticipation of future events.
Trait anxiety can be defined as a long-lasting
arousal in the face of potential threat. The
symptoms of trait anxiety are similar to
symptoms of neuroticism.
• Trait anxiety refers to the stable tendency
to attend to, experience, and report
negative emotions such as fears, worries,
and anxiety across many situations. This
is part of the personality dimension of
neuroticism versus emotional stability.
Dimensions of anxiety

• Most psychologist regard anxiety as a

multidimensional construct with at-least
three dimensions. Mental or cognitive,
physical or somatic and behavioral.
 Mental or cognitive
• Cognitive anxiety involves worrying or having
negative expectations about some situation or
performance and engaging in task-irrelevant
thinking as a consequence.
• It refers to negative expectations and cognitive
concern about oneself.
• Cognitive anxiety refers to the anxious
thoughts that accompany somatic anxiety.
Anxious thinking involves worries, self-doubts
and images of losing and humiliation.
• When a sports person may think about
concerns of underachieving from
unpleasant thoughts.
Physical or Somatic

• Somatic anxiety refers to the physical

manifestation of anxiety and may be
defined as “one’s perception of the
physiological-affective elements of the
anxiety experience, that is indications of
autonomic arousal and unpleasant feeling
states such as nervousness and tension.
• When we are anxious, we experience the
physiological changes associated with high
arousal, including increased heart rate and
blood pressure, ‘butterflies’ in the stomach,
faster breathing and flushed face. We call the
experience of physiological changes
associated with anxiety somatic anxiety (from
the Greek soma meaning body).
• When the athlete show such physical
symptoms as increased respiration,
tachycardia, feeling of butterfly in the
stomach, etc it shows somatic anxiety
symptoms.
behavioral

• The third dimension of anxiety is

behavioral. In this domain, symptoms
includes tense facial expressions, changes
in communication patterns (rapid speech
delivery) and agitation and restlessness.
CAUSES OF ANXIETY IN SPORT

• -fear of failing or a bad performance

• -fear of bad feed back or evaluation points
• -fear of the competition from the event
• -fear of an injury occurring and the athlete
having no control
• Lack of confidence
• Expectations
Event importance

• The more important a sporting event is,

the more stressful we are likely to find it. It
is probably true to say, for example, that
most footballers would find themselves
more anxious competing in the World Cup
than in a ‘friendly’. However, we must
remember that it is the importance of the
event to the individual that counts.
Trait anxiety

• Some people are prone to suffer more

anxiety than others, whatever the
situation. This can be explained by
genetics, but also by experience. Social
learning theorists might explain trait
anxiety as having been learned from
adults in childhood.
Anxiety in sports contexts

• When an athlete’s performance suffers in

an important event, it is often because of
too much worry about the outcome……
being solely concerned with winning
causes an increase in anxiety.”
• Those who score high on measures of trait
anxiety experience more state anxiety in
highly competitive and evaluative situations.
Through experience, an athlete with high trait
anxiety can learn to cope with a particular
situation and lower their state anxiety.
Knowledge of a person’s level of trait anxiety
will enable a prediction to be made about
how they will react to competitions, being
assessed and in threatening conditions.
• Drive theory
• Drive theory was proposed by Hull (1943).
The theory itself is complex,but its
application to sporting performance is
relatively simple.
• Drive theory has proved extremely useful in
explaining why experts do better in
competition and novices are more likely to
crack under pressure. It has also given us
an insight into how to optimise athletes’
arousal during training. However, drive
theory fails to explain instances where even
expert athletes become too aroused and
make errors. It also fails to take account of
the type of arousal experienced or
psychological factors that may accompany
arousal, such as cognitive anxiety.
Inverted-U hypothesis
• By the 1970s, psychologists were
dissatisfied with drive theory and had turned
to the inverted-U approach to explain the
relationship between arousal and
performance. The inverted-U hypothesis
was originated by Yerkes & Dodson (1908).
The idea is that for every task there is an
optimum level of arousal. Performance
peaks at this level and drops off above and
below it. This is shown in Figure
Anxiety management techniques.

• Imagery – by method of relaxing by creating

mental images to escape the immediate
effects of stress. The principle is to recreate
an environment that is very relaxing.

• Visualisation – the process of creating a

mental image of what you want to happen or
feel, locking into the ‘perfect performance’.
This diverts attention away from the cause of
anxiety.
• Attention control – maintaining
concentration on appropriate cues. This aims
to improve the performer’s ability to focus on
appropriate cues then the number of errors
caused by other distractions is reduced.

• Self-talk – developing positive thoughts

about one’s actions. Is vital that self talk
remains positive and focus on self-instructing
motivational content.
• Biofeedback – information about the changes in
physiological variables; the performer watches a
monitor displaying changes in readings. E.G.
heart rate, using a pulsometer or heart rate
monitor.

• Breathing control – using diaphragmatic

breathing (breathing deeply) as a means of
focusing on relaxation. Encourages full oxygen
exchange, reduces the heart rate and
lowers/stabilises blood pressure.
• Centering – using deep breathing as a way
of refocusing your concentration. Requires
the performer to focus particularly on the rate
of breathing and maintaining a slow, steady
pace.
• Progressive muscular relaxation (PMR) –
learning to be aware of the tension present in
muscles and removing it by relaxing. This is
done by alternating extreme tension that is
held for a few seconds the releasing the
tension to relax.
 Goal Setting
A technique used to control anxiety by directing
attention away from stress and towards an
achievable target.

• Outcome goals – achievement of a

particular result e.g. qualifying for the next
round. Achievement will increase motivation
but the performer cannot control the factors
influencing the outcome e.g. officials,
opposition and weather. Can lead to increase
in anxiety if result is not achieved.
• Performance goals – the performer’s
attempts are judged against others or even
with themselves. E.G. achieving a certain
time in a competition. Motivation will be
maintained if not increased.

• Process goal – concentrate on the

performer’s techniques and tactics, process
goals often influence performance goals. E.g.
to perform a slower backswing during a
bunker shot may well improve efficiency of
the stroke.