Anxiety Levels of Sports, Research Paper Example

It is a well known fact that when it comes to sports, health and physical preparation of an athlete don’t always play the key role in one’s performance and results. Very often it is the psychological readiness and stability or vice versa instability and psychological problems of a sportsman that contribute the most to one’s achievements. And, of course, sport psychologists, coaches and probably athletes themselves have always been interested in understanding how does anxiety affects sports performance. What goes on in the heads of sportsmen often turns out to be the major point in determining the winner.

The most wide spread definition of anxiety states that anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. These components combine to create an unpleasant feeling that is typically associated with uneasiness, worry, or fear (Seligman, Walker, & Rosenhan, 2001). But even though it is an unpleasant feeling, anxiety may help a person to deal with a difficult situation in one’s life and may stimulate a person to cope with it. Generally, anxiety is a form of stress. If the stressor (experiences or circumstances that initiate the stressful process) are perceived to be threatening then an emotional reaction in the form of anxiety is evoked (Charles D. Spielberger, 1989).

In the world of sport psychology there are still a lot of debates on whether anxiety is beneficial or damaging for an athlete’s performance and mental health. On one hand, very often anxiety only results in negative thinking. In case of sport competitions this negative thinking may lead to quite dramatic results, because in the long run anxiety drains energy of an athlete and eventually one’s performance suffers. But on the other hand, as Howard S. Slusher (1967) has stated in his book anxiety allows sportsman to achieve greater results and motivates him toward greater realization of his skills in the contest. In fact sport encourages a person to live with anxiety.

According to the multidimensional theory of sport anxiety (Martens, 1990) there are three components that are involved in it – cognitive anxiety, self-confidence, and somatic anxiety. Somatic anxiety – is a tension phenomenon followed by restlessness, impatience, agitation, irritability. Cognitive anxiety – is characterized by negative expectations about success or it may also be negative self-evaluation. So, in general, cognitive anxiety is more a psychological thing while somatic anxiety is more a physical one. All these components (cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, and self-confidence) have separate effects on the performance of an athlete. For example, cognitive and somatic anxieties have additive rather than interactive influence on performance. One of the most fascinating features about anxiety is that an athlete can experience totally different forms of it before, during and after the competition. Anxiety varies in intensity and fluctuates over time. For example, self-confidence is usually increasing prior to the competition, but then it may change in the process of competition. In general, it has been found that low anxiety in sports leads to low performance, increased anxiety leads to increased performance, but very high level of anxiety once again leads to poor performance.

As it has already been said each component of anxiety has its own influence on the behavior and performance of a sportsman. Thus, somatic anxiety enhances reaction and speed of decision making, and it also enhances physical reaction. On the other hand, cognitive anxiety has negative effects, because due to it mental resources of an athlete are used inefficiently and therefore are disruptive for an athlete. Self-confidence is good for matching and beating the competition, but very high levels of it may decrease performance of a sportsman. Nevertheless, among these three components self-confidence is seen to have the greatest impact on the performance of athletes. It also has been found (Martens, 1990) that non-competition (1-2 days before the competition) and pre-competition (1 hour before) cognitive and somatic anxiety levels don’t determine initial performance, but may be useful for predicting later performance that leads to the final results. Mid-competition levels of somatic and cognitive anxiety also predict later performance.

Another quite popular anxiety theory in sport psychology is the so called ‘catastrophe’ model of performance in sport. The main point of this theory is that at some moment and at some level of psychological arousal and anxiety there may appear a sudden psychological break-down in the performance of an athlete and it might be difficult to recover from it. The ‘yips’ may serve as a good example of this theory – suddenly an athlete finds himself unable to perform a well-learned and well-practiced task or skill. It may take years for even a very skilled and professional athlete to recover from this ‘catastrophic’ break-down and to return back to sport. There are a number of theories that try to explain why such a break-down occurs. One of them states that it is due to the fact that an athlete has to repeat the task for thousands of times, and at some point a lack of fine motor control may occur. But still specialists agree that all reactions are due to the individual characteristics of a sportsman. Everyone has one’s own reaction on stress and competition. Plus each sport has its own demands for the speed of decision making, force generation, precision of execution and coordination. And this also has a great influence on the possibility of appearance of the ‘catastrophic’ break-down.

In sport tasks a more experienced and skilled athlete usually is able to harness higher levels of anxiety than a less skilled one. Another characteristic is that the anxiety level of female athletes is usually higher than that of male ones. And it is also proven that self-confidence is higher of male athletes than of female.  So anxiety levels can be formed by the type of skill, type of sport, athlete’s level, time prior to the competition, etc.

Levels of anxiety have a great influence on the competitiveness and win orientation of athletes. Those sportsmen who perceive themselves to be not able to cope with the competition have very high levels of anxiety, while those who view themselves to be competitively strong and have high self-confidence are more able to handle the stressful situation of a competition.

To sum everything up it can be said that anxiety plays a huge, if not the crucial, role in the performance and results of the athletes. As it is in the case of every psychological reaction there are a lot of theories and assumptions about the role of anxiety, methods of its measurement and possibilities to use it in order to improve the performance and increase the results. But the single fact that is 100% true about anxiety is that every athlete has one’s own reaction on the somatic and cognitive anxieties, has individual self-confidence, and thus the influence of anxiety on the performance is unique for each sportsman.

References

Seligman, M. E. P., Walker, E. F., & Rosenhan, D. L. (2001). Abnormal psychology, (4th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Slusher, H. S. (1967). Man, Sport and Existence: A Critical Analysis. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger.

Hackfort, D., & Spielberger, C. D. (1989). Anxiety in Sports: an International Perspective. New York: Hemisphere Pub. Corp.

Martens, R., Vealey, R. S., & Burton, D. (1990). Competitive Anxiety in Sport. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics Books.