Competitive Anxiety Flashcards
1
Q
Cognitive Anxiety
A
“i feel nervous”
“i have self-doubt”
2
Q
Somatic anxiety
A
“my heart is racing”
“my hands are clammy”
3
Q
Anxiety Responses
A
- Intensity of symptoms (how strong these symptoms are)
- Frequency of intrusion (how often these symptoms occurred)
- Duration (how long these symptoms last)
4
Q
Trait-State research
A
- research has shown that persons with higher levels of competitive A-trait report greater levels of A-state prior to competition
- research has shown that the nature of the sport (i.e individual vs. team/subjective vs. objective) also influences A-state levels.
5
Q
Martens theory of competitive anxiety
A
Perception of Threat –> Outcome Importance, Outcome Uncertainty, State-Anxiety
6
Q
What are the two elements in the objective competitive situation that cause the perception of threat?
A
Uncertainty of the outcome: uncertainty of obtaining a favourable outcome
Important of the outcome: value in attaining a favourable outcome.
7
Q
What is the threat equation?
A
threat = f(uncertainty * importance)
- the relationship between uncertainty and importance is hypothesized to be multiplicative because if either one is absent, no threat is expected to exist
8
Q
Reasons behind limited support for the theory?
A
Measurement of uncertainty:
- it is possible that not all high levels of uncertainty should be expected to be perceived as threatening–some may interpret it as a challenge.
- it is also possible that hight certainty of not doing well (low probability of success) may be very stressful and threatening.
9
Q
Reversal Theory
A
- Three factors interact with each other to bring about a psychological reversal
- contingent events
- frustration
- satiation (innate dynamic force for change)
10
Q
Contingent Events
A
- something about the individual or environment changes thus initiating the reversal
- eg. fumble, dropped catch, trash-talk, missing an easy shot…..etc.
11
Q
Frustration
A
- frustration builds up and causes a reversal where the needs of an individual are not being satisfied
12
Q
Satiation
A
- the longer the individual remains in one state, the greater that chances that the situation will induce the reversal
13
Q
The Social Evaluation Process and Emotional reaction to competition (self-presentation)
A
- concerns about others’ impressions (eg. how one social compared to other in appearance and skill
- want to make certain impression on others, but doubt they will be successful (eg. choking behaviour (fear of being negatively evaluated))
14
Q
Leary’s proposition
A
- “competitive anxiety whether regarded as a state or trait, revolves around the self-presentational implications of competition”
- hence, competitive anxiety is a class of social anxiety that is specific to sport competition
15
Q
Study: James and Collins (1997)
A
- used semi-structured interviews and asked athletes to discuss sources of competitive stress
- sefl-presentational issues were identified as a major source of stress (eg. the need to present themselves favourably to the audience)
16
Q
Study: Wilson and Eklund (1998)
A
- asked athletes “during competition I worry that other people may perceive me as …”)
- factor analysis revealed 4 factors concerned with
- performance
- appeared fatigue/lacking energy
- appearing athletically untalented
- physical appearance
- self-presentational concern was more strongly associated with cognitive anxiety than somatic anxiety
17
Q
Inverted U Theory
A
- people have maximum performance when they are optimally aroused emotionally
- it is too simplistic
18
Q
Fazey and Hardy’s Catastrophe Model
A
- 3D and consists of (x) a normal factor (physiological arousal), (y) a splitting factor (cognitive anxiety), and (z) a dependent variable (performance)
- when cognitive anxiety is low, the model predicts that the relationship between physiological arousal and performance should resemble the inverted-U shaped curve
- when cognitive anxiety is high, increase in physiological anxiety causes a catastrophe to occur on the floor of three dimensional model (at this point performance dropped over the edge of the upper fold’s of the performance surface down to a very low point on the same surface). A condition called “hysteresis”
- if cognitive anxiety remains high, a significant decrease in physiological arousal will be necessary to return performance back to a position on top of the upper fold of the performance surface of the floor of the model
- The key proposition of the model is that cognitive anxiety acts as a splitting factor which determines whether the effects of physiological arousal will be small, catastrophic os somewhere in between
- what is innovative about catastrophe theory is that it does not assume that cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal always interact in a well-ordered fashion when influencing performance, rather they interact in an orderly fashion sometime, but at other times large and drastic catastrophe changes occur
19
Q
Hanin’s Zone of Optimal Function
A
- 3 different scenarios of when athletes thrive in amounts of anxiety
- Athlete 1 thrives when anxiety is low, 2 thrives when it is in the middle 3 thrives when it is high.
- In addition to anxiety, IZOF allow for a description of a variety of emotional states which could be either helpful or unhelpful
- a common way to find out the individual optimal performance zone is individualized emotion profiling.
20
Q
Individualized Emotion profiling
A
- Athlete identifies their helpful emotion patterns by selecting 4-5 positive and 4-5 negative items that best describe their emotions related to their individually successful performances in the past
- same thing with poor performances
- athlete rates how intensive those emotions felt prior to their successful/unsuccessful performances using a 10-item scale
21
Q
Study: IZOF anxiety and sport performance
A
- conducted a meta-analysis of 19 studies from 1978 to 1997
Found: - an overall effect size for the in-out of the zone notion - .44/ In other words, the performance of athletes who were within their optimal anxiety zones were almost half a standard deviation unit better than when they were outside their zone
- this equates to athletes within their optimal anxiety zone had a net gain of 19% in performance compare to when they were outside their zone
