Competitive Anxiety

Question 1

Cognitive Anxiety

Answer 1

“i feel nervous”

“i have self-doubt”

Question 2

Somatic anxiety

Answer 2

“my heart is racing”

“my hands are clammy”

Question 3

Anxiety Responses

Answer 3

• Intensity of symptoms (how strong these symptoms are)
• Frequency of intrusion (how often these symptoms occurred)
• Duration (how long these symptoms last)

Question 4

Trait-State research

Answer 4

• 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.

Question 5

Martens theory of competitive anxiety

Answer 5

Perception of Threat –> Outcome Importance, Outcome Uncertainty, State-Anxiety

Question 6

What are the two elements in the objective competitive situation that cause the perception of threat?

Answer 6

Uncertainty of the outcome: uncertainty of obtaining a favourable outcome
Important of the outcome: value in attaining a favourable outcome.

Question 7

What is the threat equation?

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Reasons behind limited support for the theory?

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

Reversal Theory

Answer 9

• Three factors interact with each other to bring about a psychological reversal
• contingent events
• frustration
• satiation (innate dynamic force for change)

Question 10

Contingent Events

Answer 10

• something about the individual or environment changes thus initiating the reversal
• eg. fumble, dropped catch, trash-talk, missing an easy shot…..etc.

Question 11

Frustration

Answer 11

• frustration builds up and causes a reversal where the needs of an individual are not being satisfied

Question 12

Satiation

Answer 12

• the longer the individual remains in one state, the greater that chances that the situation will induce the reversal

Question 13

The Social Evaluation Process and Emotional reaction to competition (self-presentation)

Answer 13

• 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))

Question 14

Leary’s proposition

Answer 14

• “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

Question 15

Study: James and Collins (1997)

Answer 15

• 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)

Question 16

Study: Wilson and Eklund (1998)

Answer 16

• 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

Question 17

Inverted U Theory

Answer 17

• people have maximum performance when they are optimally aroused emotionally
• it is too simplistic

Question 18

Fazey and Hardy’s Catastrophe Model

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

Hanin’s Zone of Optimal Function

Answer 19

• 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.

Question 20

Individualized Emotion profiling

Answer 20

• 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

Question 21

Study: IZOF anxiety and sport performance

Answer 21

• 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