SPORT PSYCHOLOGY
Sport Performance
ANXIETY
What is anxiety?
negative emotional state associated with
arousal
fear, worry and doubt
Caused by situations PERCEIVED as
threatening because they:
1. threaten our self-esteem (shame)
2. cause personal harm
3. create uncertainty
4. create frustration (such as being unable to
achieve goals)
5. create pressure (eg having to take a
penalty shot to win a match)
STATES vs TRAITS
Charles Spielberger (1966)
STATES = temporary, based
on situation
TRAITS = permanent
dispositions
So TRAIT ANXIETY is your
natural tendency to get
anxious
STATE ANXIETY is the anxiety
you feel right now
TRAIT ANXIETY
Rainer Martens (1977)
describes experience as a
junior wrestling coach
Team captain was very
confident, upbeat person,
but…
… got distressed and
nervous before each match
Martens decided to
measure his athletes’ A-
TRAIT (trait anxiety)
The S.C.A.T. - 1
Sports Competition Anxiety Test
Psychometric test = objective,
quantitative data
Reduce demand characteristics with
distracter questions
Easy to respond to
Easy to score
The S.C.A.T. - 2
15 questions
Rate as “Rarely” (1 point),
“Sometimes (2 points) or “Often” (3
points)
EG “Before I compete I feel uneasy”
The S.C.A.T. - 3
2 “reverse coded” questions
Rate as “Rarely” (3 points),
“Sometimes (2 points) or “Often” (1
point)
EG “Before I compete I feel relaxed”
6 distracter questions
EG “Competing against others is
socially enjoyable”
The S.C.A.T. - 4
Maximum score = 30, minimum
= 10
Less than 17 = low levels of
anxiety
Over 24 = high levels of anxiety
Is high A-trait similar to
Eysenck’s Neurotic personality
trait?
How would you test this?
Rainer Martens
SCAT is still a very widely
used test in Sport
Psychology
It’s so easy for respondents
to understand and quick for
researchers to score
Martens publishes many
books on coaching
Founded the American Sport
Education Program
Promotes physical education
in schools/colleges based on
psychological principles
Unidimensional vs
Multidimensional
SCAT and other tests measure ONE
TYPE of anxiety (A-trait)
Somatic state anxiety = physical side
effects of nervousness
Cognitive state anxiety = worry
Self-confidence = opposite of A-trait,
limits the bad effects of state anxiety
Put these together for a
MULTIDIMENSIONAL model
Anxiety & Performance
Somatic state
anxiety = inverted-
u
Cognitive state
anxiety = negative
correlation
Self-confidence =
positive correlation
The C.S.A.I.-2
Martens et al. (1990)
27 questions
Ticking "Not At All", "Somewhat", "Moderately
So" or "Very Much So“
3 different subscales
Somatic, cognitive and confidence
Range from 9 (lowest) to 36 (highest)
1. My body feels tense (somatic anxiety)
2. I'm confident I can meet the challenge (self-
confidence)
3. I feel nervous (cognitive anxiety)
Evaluating the C.S.A.I.-2
CSAI-2 measures ever-changing states of
anxiety
can’t check it for test-retest reliability
Martens has checked the internal
reliability of the CSAI-2
Do items on the same scales (somatic
anxiety, cognitive anxiety, confidence)
get similar scores?
Correlations are very strong (0.79 to 0.9)
Evaluating the C.S.A.I.-2
Concurrent validity is checked by comparing
results from each sub-scale to other
psychometric tests
Eg scores from cognitive anxiety sub-scale
compared with same person’s scores from
Worry-Emotionality Inventory (Morris et
al., 1981)
The correlation is very high.
CSAI-2 is more holistic than the other tests
Usually, making a measure more holistic makes
it less precise but CSAI-2 does produce useful
data without becoming vague or inconvenient.
Other models of anxiety - 1
Biopsychology
anxiety generated in
the brain
Amygdala &
Hippocampus
Anxiety gene?
Gene PLXNA2
identified
Other models of anxiety - 2
Psychodynamic anxiety
created by conflicts in the
unconscious
Demands of the id vs
restrictions of the super-
ego
Expressed in disguised
forms?
Hans’ phobias
Dan Jansen’s falls
“Direction” of anxiety
Is cognitive anxiety
always bad for
performance?
Some athletes say
they perform better
when worried
Others say worries
distract them
Decline or catastrophe?
Is inverted-u best description for somatic
anxiety?
After optimal point passed, does
performance tail off gradually?
Or “crash” dramatically?
What about top athletes who “choke”?
Eg Czech star Jana Novotná played Steffi
Graf in the 1993 Wimbledon women’s
singles final…
Poor Jana Novotná
Novotná took a
commanding lead
Championship point,
40-15
She lost her nerve!
Began missing easy
shots!
Steffi took the prize
Novotná cried onto the
Duchess of Kent’s
shoulder
Fazey & Hardy (1988)
Two Brits from University of Wales
1. Somatic and cognitive anxiety linked
– the one affects the other
2. Performance doesn’t always tail off
gradually often plummets
suddenly
3. Even if you “tweak” a player’s
anxiety back to the optimal level,
performance doesn’t usually recover
Catastrophe Theory - 1
Cognitive anxiety is the “splitting factor”
determines whether arousal has a
slow/gradual or sudden/dramatic effect
Inverted-u shows how arousal affects
performance with low cognitive anxiety
with high cognitive anxiety a different
pattern occurs
Under high cognitive anxiety, if arousal
goes past the optimal point a
CATASTROPHE will occur –
John Hardy compares this to a breaking
wave
Catastrophe Theory - 2
Cognitive anxiety
is low a classic
inverted-u
Cognitive anxiety
is high
performance falls
off a cliff after the One factor that
optimal point might stop the
Even arousal wave from
drops slightly “breaking” is self-
confidence
Catastrophe Theory - 2
After a catastrophe,
performance doesn’t
go back to its high
level
Even if cognitive
anxiety drops back
down again
Instead, cognitive This pattern is called
anxiety has to drop hysteresis –tendency
back to baseline for things not to go
back to their old state
performance can once passed a critical
start increasing again point
from scratch
Hysteresis?
Think of a rubber band
You apply force to
stretch it
Take the force away
Does it snap back to
its old shape?
Not quite
Hysteresis means
“there’s no going
home”
Hardy et al. (1994) - 1
8 crown green bowlers
Asked to bowl three balls at a
jack on two different days
Day 1 was the control
condition (normal anxiety)
Day 2 they were given
“threatening” instructions
CSAI-2 confirmed that the
bowlers did in fact have
higher cognitive anxiety on
the second day
Hardy et al. (1994) - 2
The players were given running tasks to
increase their physical arousal
Heat rate was measured on both days
Day 1 results followed a weak inverted-u
Day 2 performance was much better…
… but dropped away catastrophically
once heart rate got too high
Critics of Catastrophe
Diane Gill (1994) theory is too
complicated and difficult to test
EG, at what point does cognitive
anxiety stop producing simple
inverted-u relationships and start
creating the “breaking wave”
relationships of a catastrophe?
Rainer Martens (1990) not
convinced that cognitive anxiety
can improve performance