Anxiety and Optimal Athletic Performance Research Paper

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Abstract

Of all the  psychological  variables  implicated  in  sport performance,  anxiety  is regarded  to  have  the  greatest impact.   Putative   explanations   for  why  anxiety   can degrade sport performance include diminished cognitive resources,  a narrowing  of the  visual field, diminished motivation,    and    excessive   muscle    contraction    or co-contraction  of opposing  muscle groups  that  impairs coordination  or results in physical injury. As a consequence,  a wide  variety  of techniques  have  been used to assist athletes in controlling or reducing anxiety. Yet  in  spite  of the  general  consensus  within  the  field of  sport  psychology  that  anxiety  harms  sport performance,   there  are  major  disputes   as  to  which theory  best describes  this  relationship  and  as to what the most appropriate  means are to measure  anxiety in athletes. This research paper presents an overview of anxiety and sport  performance  literature.  Limitations  of traditional theoretical   explanations   are  described,   as  are  more recent  sport-specific  theories  based on  the  premise  of individual  differences in the responses of athletes, with particular  emphasis on the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning  (IZOF) model.

Outline

  1. Introduction
  2. Traditional Theoretical Perspectives on the Anxiety– Performance Relationship
  3. Sport-Specific Theories of Anxiety and Performance
  4. Other Ideographic Theories
  5. Summary

1. Introduction

Anxiety  has  been  defined  as  an  emotion  consisting of dysphoric thoughts, unpleasant sensations, and physical changes that occur in response to a situation or stimulus perceived to be threatening  or dangerous. According to most  theories,  anxiety consists of state and trait components. State anxiety indicates the intensity of anxiety experienced at a given moment and can fluctuate  widely in intensity  over a short  time  span.

Trait anxiety is a more stable factor that  assesses the general tendency of an individual to experience elevations in state anxiety when exposed to stressors such as sport competition. Persons scoring high in trait anxiety should  experience  greater  increases  in  state  anxiety when exposed to a stressor than should persons scoring low in trait anxiety. The experience of anxiety as a response  to a stressor such as sport  competition  is contingent  on both  an individual’s perception  of the stimulus and his or her ability to effectively cope with it. Because of this, sport competition may be perceived as threatening  to some individuals,  neutral  to others, and enjoyable to still others.

1.1.  Assessment of Anxiety

In sport psychology research, a variety of approaches have been used to quantify anxiety, including the observation of overt behavior, biological activity (e.g., galvanic skin activity, heart  rate,  stress  hormones),  and  self-reports. No  single  method  is entirely  reliable.  Assessments  of behaviors implicated in anxiety (e.g., pacing) may be an anxiety-reducing  strategy for some individuals  or may be entirely unrelated to anxiety in other instances. Physiological variables that have been used as biological correlates of anxiety (e.g., electromyogram [EMG]) may be difficult to assess prior  to competition,  or they may provoke an increase in anxiety in some cases (e.g., sampling blood to assess stress hormones).

Because of these problems, anxiety is most commonly determined  by means of self-report  questionnaires.  In sport  research,  the most frequently used general measure   of  anxiety   has   been   the   State–Trait   Anxiety Inventory (STAI), a 40-item questionnaire  that assesses both state and trait anxiety. Despite its proven validity, the efficacy of the STAI and other general measures of anxiety in the context of athletics has been questioned, leading to the creation  of more than  30 sport-specific anxiety  scales.  Among  these,  the  most  widely  used is the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory–2 (CSAI-2), a multidimensional  anxiety measure that assesses self-confidence, somatic anxiety, and cognitive anxiety.

Despite advantages such as the ease of administration and interpretation, self-report measures are not without limitations. The validity and reliability of self-reports are delimited  by verbal ability and self-awareness of emotional states. Administering questionnaires near the time of competition  can  be  impractical  or  disruptive  and might even result in increased anxiety by directing attention  to internal  emotional  states. A more serious problem  is  response  distortion,   which  occurs  when individuals respond falsely to questionnaires for reasons such as social desirability, the demand characteristics of the experiment, and personal expectations. Response distortion  can be detected through the use of lie scales, but this form of control is rarely used in sport psychology research.

2. Traditional Theoretical Perspectives On The Anxiety – Performance Relationship

It has been a long-standing  belief in sport psychology that high levels of anxiety experienced during competition are harmful for performance and, if unabated, may even result in some athletes quitting their sport. A variety of interventions  have been employed by sport psychology practitioners to reduce anxiety, including hypnosis, progressive relaxation, visualization, biofeedback, autogenic  training,  meditation,  negative thought stopping, and confidence enhancement. However, it also has been posited that anxiety can facilitate performance under particular conditions. This perspective originally stemmed from drive theory, otherwise known as Hullian theory.  According  to  Hullian  theory,  performance  is a function of drive (i.e., physiological arousal or anxiety) and  habit  strength  (i.e.,  skill).  High levels of anxiety should  increase the likelihood  of correct  behavior for well-learned skills, as would be the case for an emotional pep talk presented to a group of talented athletes. Evidence for drive theory  in sport  settings is lacking, however, and the theory currently has little status in the field of sport psychology.

Theoretical explanations in which high anxiety adversely influences performance have a higher standing in sport  psychology, none  more  so than  the  Yerkes– Dodson law, familiarly known as the inverted-U hypothesis. The hypothesis stems from the classic work by  Yerkes and  Dodson,  who  in  1908  examined  the influence  of stimulus  intensity  on  habit  formation  in experiments  where mice were timed in maze running. Discrete levels of difficulty were created by manipulating the level of illumination  of the maze and subjecting the mice to several intensities  of stimulation  via electrical shocks. The highest intensity shocks were found to slow learning under  the most difficult (i.e., dimmest)  maze trial,  suggesting  that  moderate  stimulation   was  best for  such  conditions.   These  results  have  since  been widely reported  in both general psychology and sport psychology textbooks, and they have been generalized to a number of constructs such as drive, motivation, learning, arousal, and anxiety.

In sport psychology, the hypothesis is presented  as a relationship  between athletic performance and either arousal or, more commonly,  anxiety. Optimal performance should occur when anxiety is within a moderate range of intensity, whereas deviations above or below this range should result in progressively worsened performance.  Hence,  anxiety  and  performance   exhibit a relationship  describing  the shape of an inverted  U. In basic terms, optimal performance  is most likely to occur when anxiety is neither too high nor too low, but because of the stressful nature of sport competition,  it is assumed  that  it  is far more  likely  for athletes  to experience too much anxiety.

2.1.  Sport Modifications

The inverted-U hypothesis has been adapted to account for sports with different physical requirements (e.g., fine motor skill vs gross motor skill) and the expertise of the athlete performing the task. Sport tasks that require precise motor control and minimal physical effort (e.g., putting  in golf) are posited to benefit when anxiety or physiological  arousal  is low prior  to  and  during  the tasks. As tasks require  greater physical effort but  less fine motor control  (e.g., tackling in football), progressively higher anxiety intensities should enhance performance.   The   second   modification   predicts   that   as expertise and talent in sport tasks increase, the optimal range  of anxiety  will  also  be  higher  compared  with athletes  who  are  either  beginners  or  intermediate  in skill. It is assumed that more talented  athletes possess the necessary motor skills and coping strategies to harness higher anxiety, whereas less skilled or experienced individuals should exhibit worsened performance at the same anxiety intensity.  Given information  about sport and  skill  level for a given athlete,  it should  then  be possible to establish an inverted-U function for the individual.

Despite the continued  popularity  of the inverted-U hypothesis, reviews of the literature in general psychology and sport psychology have concluded that its empirical  support  is weak or even entirely  absent. It has been concluded that much of the research supporting the hypothesis has little bearing on sport because it was conducted in laboratory environments  rather than realistic sport settings or because it used nonathletes as test participants.  Studies of the inverted-U hypothesis have also failed to support  the propositions  that optimal anxiety is altered by the motor skills required for a sporting  event  or  that  comparably  skilled  athletes competing in the same sport benefit from similar anxiety levels.

Another concern expressed in reviews of the inverted-U hypothesis literature and other traditional  theories is the  assumption  that  arousal  and  anxiety  are  closely related or synonymous constructs.  Arousal was originally defined as a global physiological response to a stressor that is closely associated with negative emotions such  as  anxiety.  Subsequent  research,  however,  has shown arousal to be a far more complex phenomenon. Standardized  stressors  evoke  physiological  responses that often exhibit little or no intercorrelation, and the pattern of physiological activation can vary considerably across individuals and situations. Physiological variables commonly employed as indicators of arousal (e.g., heart rate, respiration  rate)  are only weakly associated with self-report measures of anxiety, and this also is true for sport-specific measures of perceived arousal or somatic anxiety. Despite these findings, the conceptualization  of arousal  as an  undifferentiated  physiological  response closely associated with anxiety persists, particularly within the field of sport psychology.

Finally, reviews of both the general and sport literature conclude that the inverted-U hypothesis and other traditional explanations indicate that athletes should respond uniformly to anxiety. They do not allow for the occurrence of interindividual  differences to anxiety despite the fact that it has long been recognized that some athletes perform  optimally under  high intensities.  In 1929, for example, the pioneering U.S. sport psychology researcher Coleman Griffith wrote, ‘‘Some of the most distressing cases of anxiety and fear in the dressing room have led to outstanding achievements during the game.’’

3. Sport-Specific Theories Of Anxiety And Performance

3.1.  The IZOF Model

The lack of efficacy of traditional  anxiety–performance theories, as well as the acknowledgment that individual differences contribute  to this relationship,  has spurred the development of sport-specific theories that incorporate this concept. Among these theoretical explanations, the  Individual  Zones of Optimal  Functioning  (IZOF) model is believed to have the strongest empirical basis. The IZOF model was developed by the Russian psychologist Yuri Hanin from studies of athletes in a wide variety of sports  and  competitive  settings  where  anxiety  was assessed using the Russian-language version of the STAI. The results of Hanin’s research supported an ideographic explanation, in which anxiety was associated with performance at the level of the individual athlete, rather than a nomothetic explanation, in which an entire team would  respond  similarly to anxiety.  According to the IZOF model, each athlete possesses an optimal anxiety zone or range that  is beneficial for performance.  This optimal range may exist anywhere within the continuum of anxiety, from as low to as high as is measurable. When anxiety values fall outside the optimal zone, performance should decrease. The IZOF model further posits that the intensity of the optimal anxiety zone is not predictably influenced by either the type of sporting event or the skill of the individual athlete. As a result, an alternative method is needed  to identify a more  appropriate  required anxiety level for an athlete than has been employed in traditional  theories  where the responses  of athletes  to anxiety are assumed to be more uniform (Table I).

Anxiety and Optimal Athletic Performance Research Paper t1TABLE I Basic Tenets of the IZOF Model of Anxiety and Athletic

3.2.  Determining Optimal Anxiety

Two techniques  have been developed  to identify the optimal anxiety zone of an athlete: the direct method and the indirect method.  For the direct method,  state anxiety  is assessed shortly  before competitions  until an athlete achieves a personal  best performance.  The optimal  anxiety  zone  is then  created  by adding  and subtracting 4 units to this anxiety score, which is approximately  one-half  standard  deviation  based  on the STAI. The span of the optimal  anxiety zone was established from initial research, but more recent studies have demonstrated  that it can vary in width across athletes, indicating  that some individuals can tolerate a wide range of anxiety intensity before experiencing a decline in performance. Unfortunately, the direct technique requires measuring anxiety prior to competitions until  the athlete  achieves an outstanding  or personal best performance,  a process that may require  months or even years and that  is compounded  when dealing with large teams consisting of many athletes.

As a more efficient alternative,  Hanin  developed  an indirect method based on retrospection  of past competitions. With the indirect  method,  athletes complete  the state portion  of the STAI according to how they recall feeling prior to their own best past performances or prior to performances judged to be optimal. Again, 4 anxiety units are added and subtracted  from this ‘‘recalled best’’ anxiety score to establish the optimal zone. The accuracy of the  indirect  method  has been tested  by correlating recalled anxiety scores with anxiety values actually obtained  at the time of the  recalled events, and effect sizes ranging from .60 to .80 have been reported consistently. Research indicates that the levels of accuracy in recalling  anxiety  are comparable  in athletes  who  performed either better or worse than expected despite concerns that performance outcome could bias accuracy. Although the effect size for recalled and actual precompetition anxiety supports the use of the indirect method for  determining   optimal   anxiety   ranges,   occasional reports of inaccurate recall have been noted in the literature. In such instances, the direct method should be used.

3.3.  Interindividual Variability in Optimal Anxiety

The  IZOF model  predicts  not  only  that  athletes  of a similar caliber in a given sport will differ in the intensity of optimal anxiety but also that a significant proportion will benefit from high anxiety. The findings from studies of athletes in a number of sports and different levels are consistent with these propositions, indicating that between 25 and 50% report that best performances occur when  anxiety  levels are elevated.  As predicted  by the IZOF model,  the  proportion   of athletes  who  perform best at high anxiety intensities is not related to skill or even age. For example, in studies of elite U.S. distance runners,   it  was  found  that  30%  of  female  runners reported  that best performances were most likely when anxiety was significantly elevated, but percentages as high as 51% have been noted in nonelite college track and field athletes. Even in track and field athletes as young as 9 to 12 years, more than one in four indicated that they performed  best  with  high  anxiety.  These  results  and other findings provide support  for the IZOF model, but they are not consistent with group-based explanations of anxiety and performance. For example, according to both drive theory and the inverted-U hypothesis, the proportion of individuals who benefit from high anxiety should consistently be higher for elite athletes than for less talented competitors.

The evidence of wide-ranging variability in precompetition and optimal anxiety complicates the use of intervention strategies designed to regulate anxiety. Group-based  interventions,  in  which  an  entire  team of athletes receives a single treatment  such as relaxation, are easily administered  but would be ineffective or counterproductive for those athletes who perform best at moderate or high anxiety intensities. On the other hand, it can be time-consuming to use IZOF procedures to assess anxiety at the time of competition and then compare these values  with  each  athlete’s  optimal  zone  to  determine who will be in need of some form of intervention.

3.4.  Predicting Precompetition Anxiety

In an effort to provide a means for coaches and psychologists to efficiently identify those athletes who will require  anxiety intervention,  as well as to determine the appropriate  direction  of the intervention  (e.g., increase or decrease anxiety),  IZOF studies have tested the ability of athletes  to anticipate  the intensity  they will experience prior to actual competition. In this research,  athletes  completed  the  state portion  of the STAI several days prior to a competition  with instructions  to  respond  according  to  how  they  anticipated they would  feel immediately  before the  competition. Athletes  then  completed  the  STAI again  just  before the  competition  under  the  standard  instructional   set (i.e., ‘‘right now’’), and that  score was then  compared with the predicted anxiety score. To minimize intrusiveness, the questionnaires  were sometimes completed  at a prescribed  time  before  competition  (e.g.,  60  minutes).  The results  of this  work  reveal that  predicted anxiety   scores   correlate   quite   closely  with   actual values. Correlations between predicted and actual precompetition  anxiety range between .60 and .80, with higher coefficients occurring for difficult or important competitions.

Predicted precompetition  anxiety scores are useful in situations  where it would be difficult or impossible to assess anxiety just prior to the actual competition.  The discrepancy between predicted  precompetition  anxiety and IZOF values can be contrasted  to identify athletes who are likely to be too relaxed or too anxious, and this can be done several days before the competition.

From  a practical  perspective,  the  extent  to  which anxiety deviates from the optimal zone can help dictate how much anxiety must be increased or decreased to reach  the  optimal  zone.  Simple  techniques  that  are easily implemented  by the  coaching  staff can  be an expeditious  means  to  manipulate  anxiety.  These  include  emphasizing  or deemphasizing  the  importance of the competition  or the expectations  of an athlete’s performance.

3.5.  Impact of Optimal Anxiety on Performance

Research based on IZOF procedures indicates that deviations in precompetition anxiety from the optimal zone have  a significant  impact  on  performance.  Studies  of athletes in sports such as swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, and ice skating indicate that precompetition  anxiety of successful performers  is closer to their own optimal anxiety values than is the case with their less successful teammates.  In most cases, performance  differences are evident only in difficult competitions,  and it has been speculated  that  optimal  anxiety  is  not  necessary  to achieve adequate  performance  in easy or unimportant competitions. In research that has examined the net impact of anxiety on sport performance, it has been found that performances were approximately 2% worse on average in cases where precompetition anxiety fell outside the  IZOF and  that  the  decrement  was approximately equal whether anxiety was lower or higher than optimal. Despite evidence that  supports  the major  tenets  of the  IZOF  model,  the  model  has  been  criticized  on a number of grounds. One primary concern is that the IZOF model does not indicate what variables contribute to the differences in optimal  anxiety observed in homogenous groups of athletes. To date, studies of the factors  contributing   to  interindividual   variability  in optimal anxiety have been rare, and the bulk of IZOF research has focused on examining the validity of the major tenets of the model. A second line of criticism contends  that  IZOF  research  based  on  the  STAI or other  nonspecific  and  general measures  of anxiety is inadequate,  whereas more complete results would be yielded by employing a sport-specific measure assessing multiple aspects of anxiety, particularly the CSAI-2. However, the results of CSAI-2 research on the IZOF model have been less consistent than research based on the STAI, and the IZOF model has been found to be less accurate than the STAI in assessing both recalled and predicted precompetition anxiety.

4. Other Ideographic Theories

Two other major theories of anxiety and sport performance have been adopted  recently  for sport:  reversal theory and catastrophe theory. Although the concept of individual differences are not central to these theories, like the IZOF model, they acknowledge that anxiety can either facilitate or harm sport performance.  Unlike the IZOF  model,  both  reversal  and  catastrophe  theories incorporate  specific anxiety or perceived arousal scales. Reversal theory predicts that self-reported arousal is important  to performance  despite  a lack of evidence that self-reports can provide an objective indication  of physiological  activity.  Arousal  is  interpreted   on  the basis of an  individual’s current  emotional  state  that results   from  the   interaction   of  oppositional   high arousal preferring  (paratelic)  and low-arousal  preferring (telic) states that are also assessed via self-reports. Catastrophe  theory  uses an arousal-related  measure referred  to  as  somatic  anxiety,  which  is assumed  to exhibit an inverted-U relationship  with performance. In addition, measures of self-confidence and cognitive anxiety are assessed using a modified version of the CSAI-2 that    assesses   facilitative   and    debilitative    anxiety. Cognitive anxiety is posited to be negatively related to performance, whereas self-confidence exhibits a positive relationship.   When  these  dimensions  are  considered collectively, they form a complex three-dimensional  figure referred to as a butterfly or catastrophe cusp. Reviews of the efficacy of reversal and catastrophe theories have been mixed, and this may stem in part from the challenges of validating these complex theories empirically.

5. Summary

The growing realization that traditional theoretical explanations  of anxiety  and  performance  fair  poorly when  applied  to sport  has led to the development  of several models and theories of anxiety specific to athletes. Further  research is needed before definitive judgments can be made about the relative efficacy of these theoretical explanations, but they all indicate that influence of anxiety on sport performance is more complex than is predicted by traditional explanations such as the inverted-U hypothesis. In particular, the results of IZOF model research  reveal that  the  anxiety intensity  associated with optimal sport performance varies considerably across athletes,  even for those  competing  in the same competition.  This research  also indicates  that  a substantial  percentage of athletes actually benefit from elevated anxiety and that in these cases, interventions aimed at reducing anxiety may be counterproductive.

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