Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Box 3.3 Thinking critically about...research on direction of anxiety

In sport psychology, the term “direction of anxiety” refers to whether an athlete sees
anxiety as facilitative or debilitative of athletic performance. To indicate the value of this
variable, G.Jones and Swain (1992) added a Likert scale of directionality to each item of
the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 to explore the degree to which athletes viewed
anxiety as facilitative of their performance. They also administered a test of
competitiveness to each athlete. Results showed that highly competitive athletes believed
more significantly in the facilitative effects of anxiety than did less successful
counterparts. Another study by G.Jones, Hanton and Swain (1994) found that successful
swimmers viewed their anxiety as being more facilitative of performance than did less

successful swimmers—even though the groups did not differ significantly on anxiety
intensity. Based on such evidence, G.Jones (1995) recommended the “directional
modification” of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2, Recently, however,
conceptual and methodological criticisms of direction of anxiety have been raised—as
well as an alternative model of the relationship between arousal and performance.
First, Burton (1998) has queried the rationale underlying G.Jones’s approach. In
particular, he wondered whether or not anxiety can ever be regarded as “facilitative”. Is it
possible that researchers have been confusing somatic anxiety with more positive
emotional states such as excitement or challenge (see also Kerr, 1997)? Burton (1998)
argued that cognitive appraisal processes determine whether people experience a positive
emotion, such as excitement/challenge, or a negative emotion, such as anxiety, when they
are aroused in athletic competition, Clearly, more research is required to distinguish
between the different emotional experiences of athletes (but see Hanin, 2000). The
second weakness of G.Jones’s approach is that measurement of direction of anxiety relies
on self-report data. As indicated in Chapter 1, however, people are not always reliable
judges of their own behaviour. Therefore, we should not assume that athletes are always
correct when they tell us that anxiety had a facilitative effect on their performance.
Finally, “reversal theory” (a conceptual model of motivation and emotion which suggests
that people switch back and forth between different frames of mind: see Kerr, 1997) also
highlights the importance of individual differences in the interpretation of arousal
symptoms. For example, when athletes are in a “telic state” (ie,, highly task-oriented),
high arousal may be interpreted as unpleasant anxiety whereas low anxiety may be
interpreted as pleasant relaxation. By contrast, athletes who are in a “paratelic state”
(characterised by a fun-loving, present-centred focus) may regard high arousal as
pleasantly exciting whereas they may perceive low arousal as unpleasant boredom). In
summary, despite its intuitive plausibility, the concept of direction of anxiety has not
been validated adequately in sport psychology.

Critical thinking questions
Can you think of a way of assessing whether anxiety facilitates or hampers athletic
performance without using a quantitative research design or self-report scales? In
particular, would qualitative research methodology (see Chapter 1) offer a viable
alternative to the selfreport approach? How could you validate athletes’insights into

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