Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Components of anxiety: cognitive, somatic and behavioural

Most psychologists regard anxiety as a multidimensional construct with at least three
dimensions or components: mental (or “cognitive”), physical (or “somatic”) and
behavioural (Gould et al., 2002). Let us now examine each of these components in turn.
First, cognitive anxiety involves worrying or having negative expectations about some
impending situation or performance and engaging in task-irrelevant thinking as a
consequence (see also Chapter 4 on concentration in athletes). More precisely, it refers to
“negative expectations and cognitive concerns about oneself, the situation at hand and
potential consequences” (Morris, Davis and Hutchings, 1981, p. 541). But what do
athletes worry about in sport? Although little research has been conducted on this issue,
Dunn (1999) and Dunn and Syrotuik (2003) discovered four main themes in an analysis
of cognitive anxiety in intercollegiate ice-hockey players. These themes were a fear of
performance failure, apprehension about negative evaluation by others, concerns about
physical injury or danger, and an unspecified fear of the unknown. On average, the
players in this study were more concerned about performance failure and negative
evaluation by others than about the other two worry domains. In general, cognitive
anxiety has a debilitating effect on athletic performance (Cashmore, 2002). We shall
return to this issue in the third section of the chapter when we explore why some athletes
“choke” under pressure. By the way, cognitive anxiety about future performance is also
widespread among performers other than athletes. For example, performance anxiety or
stage fright has blighted the careers of such talented people as the singer Barbra Streisand
who forgot the words of one of her songs during a concert in Central Park, New York, in
front of 135,000 people—an event which prompted her to avoid singing “live” for
another twenty-seven years (Sutcliffe, 1997). Similar problems of excessive anxiety have
been documented in the cases of actors Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jacobi and Stephen Fry
(Harlow, 1999).
The second component of the construct of anxiety involves somatic or bodily
processes. Somatic anxiety refers to the physical manifestation of anxiety and may be
defined as “one’s perception of the physiological-affective elements of the anxiety
experience, that is, indications of autonomic arousal and unpleasant feeling states such as
nervousness and tension” (Morris et al., 1981, p. 541). In sport, this component of
anxiety is apparent when an athlete is afflicted by such physical symptoms as increased
perspiration, a pounding heart, rapid shallow breathing, clammy hands and a feeling of
“butterflies” in the stomach. Whereas cognitive anxiety is characterised by negative
thoughts and worries, somatic anxiety is associated with signs of autonomic arousal. It
should be noted, however, that some researchers (e.g., Kerr, 1997) have suggested that
increases in physiological arousal may accompany emotions other than anxiety. In
particular, excitement and anger appear to have physiological substrates similar to those
of anxiety (see also Box 3.3). The third component of anxiety is behavioural. In this
domain, indices of anxiety include tense facial expressions, changes in communication
patterns (e.g., unusually rapid speech delivery) and agitation and restlessness (Gould et
al., 2002). Surprisingly, relatively little research has been conducted on the behavioural
manifestations of anxiety in athletes—mainly because of the dearth of suitable checklists

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