for the assessment of such phenomena. Nevertheless, it is widely believed that anxiety
produces jerky and inefficient muscular movements in athletes.
Before we conclude this section, an important theoretical issue needs to be addressed
concerning the tri-dimensional nature of anxiety. Specifically, given the inextricable links
between mind and body in sport, is it valid to postulate that cognitive and somatic anxiety
are truly separate dimensions of this construct? There are at least two sources of evidence
to support this distinction (Burton, 1998). First, factor analyses of self-report state anxiety
scales tend to reveal a multidimensional rather than a unidimensional structure. Second,
there are grounds for believing that cognitive and somatic anxiety emanate from different
types of pre-competitive patterns. For example, research suggests that whereas cognitive
anxiety remains relatively high and stable prior to competition for most athletes, somatic
anxiety tends to remain low until one or two days before the event—at which point it
increases steadily before peaking at the start of a competition. After that, it tends to
dissipate rapidly (Woodman and Hardy, 2001). With regard to this issue, Fenz and
Epstein (1967) explored the temporal pattern of physiological arousal responses among
expert and novice sky-divers prior to performance. Results showed that in the expert
performers, peak arousal levels were reached significantly in advance of the jump. By
contrast, the physiological arousal of the novice parachutists started at a relatively low
level but increased progressively in the time leading up to the jump. In summary,
evidence from psychometric studies of self-report scales and that from studies of changes
in the pattern of athletes’ affect over time suggests that cognitive and somatic anxiety are
in fact independent dimensions of anxiety.
Anxiety, fear and arousalSo far, we have been using the terms anxiety, arousal and fear quite loosely. Let us now
distinguish between them more precisely. Anxiety is believed to differ from fear in
lasting longer (Buckworth and Dishman, 2002) and in tending to be more
undifferentiated than fear—because people can be anxious about something that is not
physically present or immediately perceptible. Despite these differences, however,
anxiety is similar to a fear in some ways. To explain, anxiety is elicited whenever people
interpret a particular person, event or situation as posing a threat to them in some way.
This perception of threat may be based on realistic or imaginary fears—although the
distinction between these two factors is often blurred in everyday life. For example, if
you are a tennis player and serving at match-point in your local club championship, you
will probably feel a little anxious—even though your feelings in this case are
disproportionate to the physical danger involved in the situation, unless your opponent
has a reputation for being physically violent on court! But if you are a novice parachutist
facing your first jump with no instructor around, you may have every reason to feel
nervous because of the potential danger to your life. Let us turn now to the distinction
between anxiety and arousal.
In psychology, the term “arousal” refers to a type of bodily energy which primes or
prepares us for emergency action. For example, when we are threatened physically, our
body’s sympathetic nervous system prepares us either to confront the source of danger or
to run away from it. This “fight or flight” response triggers such bodily reactions as a
faster heart beat, release of glucose into the bloodstream and heightened levels of arousal.
"Psyching up" and "calming down": anxiety in sport 69