Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Chapter 3 “Psyching up” and calming down: anxiety in sport The first round often provides the most panic-stricken snooker you’ll ...

Figure 3.1 According to Pádraig Harrington, playing in the Ryder Cup can be a nerve-racking experience Source: courtesy of Inpho ...

depends on whether they can either bring themselves up or take themselves down, (cited in Selvey, 1998, p. 2; italics mine) Simi ...

Components of anxiety: cognitive, somatic and behavioural Most psychologists regard anxiety as a multidimensional construct with ...

for the assessment of such phenomena. Nevertheless, it is widely believed that anxiety produces jerky and inefficient muscular m ...

But what does “arousal” involve? According to Gould et al. (2002), it is a “general physiological and psychological activation o ...

experiencing facilitative anxiety (as in the cases of Andre Agassi and Tiger Woods above). Although this “directional perception ...

interpretation as well as of intensity. With regard to practical implications, directionality effects highlight the importance o ...

Types of anxiety: state and trait Since the seminal research of Spielberger (1966), a distinction has been drawn by psychologist ...

Why do athletes differ so much from each other in the amount of precompetitive anxiety which they display? According to Wann (19 ...

tied inextricably to what they achieve, they are especially likely to become nervous at the prospect of defeat as it constitutes ...

highly intercorrelated, a fact which suggests that they are not all measuring the same construct. Finally, physiological assessm ...

test interval of eighteen days (Smith et al., 1990). Evidence of convergent validity for this scale was reported by Smith et al. ...

Box 3.3 Thinking critically about...research on direction of anxiety In sport psychology, the term “direction of anxiety” refers ...

their own emotional experiences? Can reversal theory help to explain why athletes may switch from perceiving anxiety as facilita ...

Although the preceding anecdotal examples are useful in highlighting the importance of arousal control to athletes, they do not ...

refer to alleged insults by opponents. Thus Jeremy Guscott, the former England and Lions rugby player, remarked that “nothing is ...

Part one suggests that people’s performance on skilled tasks is best when their level of arousal is intermediate and that it det ...

state anxiety or worry) to influence athletic performance. More precisely, this theory postulates that arousal is associated wit ...

apprehension (e.g., requesting an alleged golfing expert to judge their putting performance) and financial inducement. Results s ...