Animals Education

Anxiety and Fear in Sport and Performance

Summary and Keywords

 Anxiety and fear are unpleasant emotions commonly experienced in sport and performance settings. While fear usually has a clear cause, the source of hysteria is relatively vague and sophisticated. Anxiety has cognitive and somatic components and may be either a trait or a state. To assess the various aspects of hysteria, a spread of psychometric scales are developed in sport and performance domains. Besides efforts to quantify anxiety, a serious focus within the anxiety-performance literature has been to explore the impact of hysteria on performance and why such effects occur. Anxietyperformance theories and models have increased the understanding of how anxiety affects performance and have helped to elucidate why anxiety is widely considered a negative emotion that individuals typically seek to avoid in performance settings. Nonetheless, individuals approach anxiety-inducing or fear-provoking situations in several ways. For instance, high-risk sport research shows that individuals can actively approach fear-inducing environments so as to glean intra- and interpersonal regulatory benefits. Such individual differences are particularly relevant to sport and performance researchers and practitioners, as those that actively approach competition to enjoy the fear-inducing environment (i.e., the “risk”) are likely to possess a performance advantage over those that compete while having to deal with their troublesome anxiety and fear. Future research would had best to: (1) examine the consequences of hysteria on the processes that underpin performance instead of a sole specialize in the performance outcomes, (2) test directly the various cognitive functions that are thought to be impaired when performing under anxiety, (3) unite the prevailing theories to know a “whole picture” of how anxiety influences performance, and (4) explore the largely overlooked field of individual differences within the context of performance psychology.

 

Keywords: Conscious processing, explicit monitoring, reinvestment, processing efficiency, attentional control, ironic processing, performance catastrophe, high-risk sports, individual differences.

Distinguishing Anxiety from Fear

 Fear was one among the critical themes in Ancient Greek philosophy. The conceptualization of fear are often traced back to the age of the good thinkers like Aristotle (384 BCE–322 BCE), Epicurus (341 BCE–270 BCE), and Galen (CE 129– CE 216). for instance, Aristotle’s Theory of Contrariety (Anton, 1957) stated that the complexities of the cosmos contains basic pairs of opposites (e.g., hot versus cold). When using contrary pairs to conceptualize fear, Aristotle made fear the other to confidence, and he attributed one’s fearfulness as connected to life events concerning poverty, loneliness, friendlessness, dishonor, pain, illness, and death (Bywater, 1894). After Aristotle, other great thinkers like Epicurus and Galen also provided fruitful thoughts on fear (see Hall, 1974). Despite their different opinions on the way to affect fear, Epicurus and Galen agreed that fear is that the specific effect of one’s painful anticipation or imagination of unpleasant feelings (Irwin, 1947; Laërtius, 1925). These ancient viewpoints foresee some essential modern discussions on fear. In his Theory of Psychoanalysis, Freud (1920) argued that any fear has a clear cause. That is, fear always features a specific source, and individuals detect threats and react to them accordingly (e.g., fight or flight). Anxiety is different from fear. Whereas fear features a direct link to identifiable objects (e.g., a spider) or circumstances (e.g., darkness), the source of hysteria is relatively vague. Freud suggested that anxiety is “the evolution of fear” (Freud, 1920, p. 345). That is, when experiencing anxiety, one perceives sensations that are almost like those experienced when fearful, but the anxiety experience appears more complex and vague compared to fear. Specifically, whereas people will fairly rapidly skills to avoid fear, they're going to less readily understand the way to avoid anxiety. for instance, an individual who is fearful (scared) when seeing a spider will experience a decline in fear once he/she is far away from the spider. Conversely, an athlete affected by performance anxiety during a crucial competition will likely find it harder to scale back or overcome such unpleasant feelings. the excellence between anxiety and fear has also been supported at a neurobehavioral level (Perusini & Fanselow, 2015). especially, an individual who feels fearful tends to initiate post-encounter defense (i.e., react toward the prevailing dangerous situation), which is said to the activation of the subcortical forebrain (e.g., Price, 2005). However, an individual who is anxious tends to initiate pre-encounter defense (i.e., respond toward the doubtless dangerous environments where typical “threat” has yet to be encountered), which is said to the activation of the prefrontal cortex (e.g., Mobbs et al., 2009).

Anxiety is an unpleasant emotion. aside from some discordant views (cf. Zajonc, 1980, 1984), most researchers (e.g., Eysenck & Calvo, 1992; Gray, 1982; Lazarus, 1982; Sarason, 1984) agree that anxiety may be a primary emotion that that needs cognitive processing before being experienced (see also Woodman & Hardy, 2001). Early conceptualizations (e.g., Lévy-Valensi, 1948) suggested that anxiety may be a distressing feeling that comprises both cognitive worrying and somatic symptoms like dizziness, breathing difficulty, heart palpitations, tension, and trembling(see also Liebert & Morris, 1967). Both cognitive and somatic anxiety can occur at either a trait or state level. While literature usually gives credit to either Cattell and Scheier (1960) or Spielberger (1966) in introducing the excellence between trait and state anxiety, this distinction has existed for quite two thousand years. The Latin philosopher Cicero (106 BCE–43 BCE), in his “Tusculan Disputations” (Cicero, 1927), clarified that anxietas (trait anxiety), one’s temperament of being susceptible to anxiousness is different to angor (state anxiety), one’s subjective feeling of tension and worry under certain circumstances. Consistent with Cicero, the extent of one’s state anxiety depends on the synergic effect of one’s trait anxiety and perceived environmental threats. This interplay between trait anxiety and environmental threats contributes to the performance anxiety literature (e.g., Cheng, Hardy, & Markland, 2009).

Measuring Anxiety in Sport and Performance 

To quantify one’s perceived anxiety in performance settings; researchers have developed a spread of measurements. For trait anxiety in sport, Smith, Smoll, and Schutz (1990) developed the game Anxiety Scale (SAS). The SAS consists of three subcomponents: worry, somatic anxiety, and concentration disruption. Thanks to the inconsistency of the SAS’s factor structure across adult and child samples, Smith, Smoll, Cumming, and Grossbard (2006) revised the SAS to make the SAS-2. During this revised measure, they retained an equivalent subcomponents of trait anxiety and improved the things in order that the measure demonstrated acceptable validity for adults and youngsters. 

To measure state anxiety in sport, Martens, Burton, Rivkin, and Simon (1980) first constructed the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory (CSAI). Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump, and Smith (1990) later developed the 27-item CSAI-2 by specifying three relatively independent pre-competition subcomponents including cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, and self-confidence. The CSAI-2, later revised to the CSAI-2R to reinforce the factor structure (Cox, Martens, & Russell, 2003), is that the most generally used measure of competitive state anxiety in sport psychology research. Nonetheless, when researchers wish to live these pre-competition constructs during a less time-consuming manner to capture participants’ affect within a brief timeframe, they often resort to administering single-item versions of the CSAI-2 (e.g., Hardy & Hutchinson, 2007) or the Mental Readiness Form (MRF) (e.g., Barlow, Woodman, Gorgulu, & Voyzey, 2016; Woodman, Barlow, & Gorgulu, 2015; Woodman & Davis, 2008). The MRF (Krane, 1994) comprises three single-item factors that measure worry/cognitive anxiety, tension/somatic anxiety, and self-confidence. The single-item format of the MRF is a smaller amount intrusive and thus convenient for allowing researchers and practitioners to live anxiety as close as possible to either the manipulative instructions or the next performance. Furthermore, the utilization of the word “worry” within the MRF may be a better description of state cognitive anxiety than the word “concern,” which is employed in both the CSAI-2 and therefore the CSAI-2R. Indeed, the word concern is hospitable ambiguous interpretation because concern might reflect worry, but it'd also reflect the perceived importance of an occasion (e.g., “I am concerned about this competition”; see Woodman & Hardy, 2001).

 Work using the CSAI-2 or CSAI-2R only assesses the intensity of hysteria symptoms. However, in an effort to include individual interpretations of hysteria (i.e., viewing anxiety as either facilitative or debilitative), some researchers utilize an amended version of the CSAI-2, which incorporates a directional scale (CSAI-2D; see Jones & Swain, 1992). The CSAI-2D adds a facilitative-debilitative directional continuum scale to every of the things within the CSAI-2, thus allowing the assessment of both anxiety intensity and its interpretations. a good range of research in sport and performance psychology has adopted such a directional approach of hysteria (see Wagstaff, Neil, Mellalieu, & Hanton, 2012). However, while some studies (e.g., Jones, Smith, & Holmes, 2004; Jones, Swain, & Hardy, 1993) demonstrated the association between anxiety interpretation and former or predicted. 

Performance, most of the work investigating directional interpretations has focused on antecedents or mechanisms of hysteria interpretation as against the connection between anxiety interpretation and performance. 

More recently, Cheng et al. (2009) developed the Three-Factor Anxiety Inventory (TFAI) comprising cognitive anxiety, physiological anxiety, and therefore the regulatory function of hysteria. Consistent with Cheng et al., anxious performers evaluate not only environmental and internal threats but also their capacity to regulate these threats, which ends up in voluntary coping (regulatory dimension). By acknowledging the regulatory dimension of hysteria, Cheng et al. argued that the TFAI would facilitate a far better understanding of the complex anxiety-performance relationship. There’s some support for this attitude (Cheng, Hardy, & Woodman, 2011; Otten, 2009).

 Theories and Models of hysteria and Performance 

Skill-Focused Versus Distraction Theories 

Skill-focused (or self-focused) theories and distraction theories are the 2 classes of theories that have received the foremost research attention within the anxiety-performance literature. Both theories specialize in the detrimental effect of hysteria on cognitive processing as a critical mechanism but provide different explanations for a way anxiety affects performance. 

The Reinvestment Perspective 

Skill-focused theories emphasize the role of self-consciousness within the skilled performance Process. The reason of how anxiety affects performance is closely linked to Fitts and Posner’s (1967) stages of skill learning. Consistent with Fitts and Posner, people learn skills through explicit encoding of the specified knowledge. That is, within the early stages of learning, people explicitly and consciously specialise in how they ought to behave so as to perform a skill. Such a particular and conscious specialise in each component of the skill leads to a clumsy and jagged performance. This is often like a baby learning to feed itself.

As we become better with the skill, our specific knowledge domain regarding what needs to be wiped out order to perform the skill becomes gradually more subconscious, and the skill becomes smooth and efficient. This is often like an adult eating with a knife and fork (there is not any conscious effort). Consistent with the skill-focused account of anxietyinduced Performance breakdown, a talented performer has reached automaticity and is thus ready to perform skills subconsciously and smoothly (Anderson, 1982; Masters, 1992).

However, when skilled performers are anxious, they reinvest attention on (consciously monitor) their skill by using step-by-step “rules,” which regresses skilled performance to a novel level and results in performance impairments.

The reinvestment effect as proposed within the skill-focused theories has been well tested. Masters (1992) first proposed the Conscious Processing Hypothesis (CPH), positing that performers, when experiencing anxiety, plan to use explicit “rules” in task execution, Rather than perform the task “automatically” as they might normally. Consistent with the CPH, using explicit knowledge to interrupt down well-established “automatic” task execution harms performance. to check the CPH, Masters assigned a sample of novice golfers to either a particular learning group (i.e., who used detailed technical instructions when Practicing putting) or an implicit learning group (i.e., to perform a random letter generation when practicing putting, without access to technical instructions). After an Intensive rehearsal, both groups putted under a high-anxiety condition. In line with CPH, if the performance decrement under high anxiety is thanks to conscious processing, only the specific learning group (i.e., those with access to detailed knowledge) would suffer impaired performance. Results showed that the implicit learning group continued to improve, but the specific learning group did not do so, supporting the notion that the use of explicit “rules” when feeling anxious is relatively detrimental to performance (see also Hardy, Mullen, & Jones, 1996). Another skill-focused perspective stems from Baumeister’s (1984) seminal work on testing the effect of explicit monitoring, the specific Monitoring Hypothesis (EMH; Beilock & Carr, 2001). almost like the CPH, the EMH proposes that when performers experience anxiety, they have a tendency to watch their performance throughout task execution in an attempt to make sure excellent performance; such monitoring disrupts well-established routines and makes performance vulnerable. to check the EMH, Beilock and Carr trained a sample of novice golfers to a high skill level in either a single-task group, a distraction group (i.e., performing a secondary task when practicing putting), or a self-consciousness group (i.e., using video to induce self-monitoring when practicing putting).

After intensive training, these golfers performed a putting transfer task during a high-anxiety condition. Anxiety harmed the performance of the control and distraction groups. Only the performance of the self-consciousness group didn't suffer within the high anxiety condition. This maintenance in performance of the self-consciousness group was expected because explicit monitoring was present in both low- (i.e., manipulation-induced) and high-anxiety condition (i.e., anxiety-induced) for this group.

Considering that both conscious processing (i.e., the utilization of explicit rules) and explicit monitoring (i.e., the act of monitoring the method of performance) describe the reinvestment of attention during task execution, Masters and Maxwell (2008) united the CPH and therefore the EMH under one umbrella: the idea of Reinvestment (TOR). Evidence for the TOR has emerged in several performance domains (e.g., Gray, 2004; Jackson, Ashford, & Norsworthy, 2006; Kinrade, Jackson, & Ashford, 2015). Psychophysiological research has also provided some neuroscientific evidence to support the TOR. For instance, during a pressurized putting task, Cooke et al. (2015) found that pre-movement electroencephalographic (EEG) high-alpha power reduced when a previous putt wasmissed compared to when it had been holed, and this effect was greater in expert than in novice golfers. Since the reduced EEG high-alpha power reflects a rise within the resources allocated to regulate putting (Cooke et al., 2014), Cooke et al.’s (2015) findings show that experts, compared to novices, reinvested greater resources when there was a need to correct for previous errors (i.e., a missed putt), which is in line with the TOR prediction that experts have more resources (e.g., explicit knowledge) to reinvest.

Further, Gallicchio, Cooke, and Ring (2016) identified the T7-Fz of lower left temporalfrontal connectivity as a neurophysiological marker of movement-specific conscious processing. Gallicchio et al. found that T7-Fz connectivity successfully distinguished missed and holed putts, supporting the key prediction of the TOR that conscious processing impairs performance (see also Dyke et al., 2014).

The Distraction Perspective

Distraction theories propose that worry will induce cognitive interference, which shifts the performer’s attention from the task to task-irrelevant thoughts. Developed in cognitive psychology, the 2 main theories of distraction are Processing Efficiency Theory (PET; Eysenck & Calvo, 1992) and Attentional Control Theory (ACT; Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007). PET incorporated the critical assumption of Cognitive Interference Theory (CIT; Sarason, 1984). That is, while creating high cognitive demands, anxiety within the sort of worry preempts the resources of memory thus resulting in impaired performance. However, based on a set of initial works (Eysenck, 1979; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985; Eysenck, Macleod, & Mathews, 1987), Eysenck and colleagues argued that the CIT exaggerates the role that worry plays in impairing performance. Providing different evidence that increasing anxiety doesn't always undermine cognitive performance, Eysenck and Calvo (1992) proposed that worry serves two principal functions. On the one hand, worry distracts cognitive processing by pre-empting memory, which shifts attention to task-irrelevant thoughts and is detrimental to performance. On the opposite hand, worry also serves a motivational function, whereby the fear about performing poorly may cause the reallocation of additional cognitive resources (i.e., trying harder) and thus the maintenance of optimal performance when anxious.

The two principal roles of hysteria as proposed within the PET point to its two main predictions. First, the detrimental role of hysteria predicts that prime trait anxious performers are going to be more vulnerable than low trait anxious performers to the adverse effect of hysteria, and these adverse performance effects will increase because the cognitive demands of the task increase. Second, anxiety impairs performance efficiency (e.g., longer time interval, greater effort) quite performance effectiveness (i.e., the quality of performance). As such, it's only there are not any extra resources available to buffer anxiety that performance decrements occur.

Although initial support for these predictions was from psychology (see Eysenck & Calvo, 1992), a powerful body of research within sport psychology has also evidenced these predictions. For instance, Smith, Bellamy, Collins, and Newell (2001) followed a sample of elite volleyball players throughout a competitive season. These authors reported findings according to the PET that prime trait anxious players reported higher anxiety and greater mental effort compared to low trait anxiety players when performance was like one another (see also Wilson & Smith, 2007).

The impairment in performance efficiency can also appear within the sort of increased processing time (rather than simply in increased effort). for instance, Murray and Janelle (2003) tested a sample of participants within the context of a dual-task racing simulation. The authors instructed participants that both the driving task and therefore the secondary task were equally important for the needs of competition. Results indicated that although driving performance was similar within the baseline and therefore the competition, high trait anxious participants spent longer responding to the secondary task within the competition condition. there have been no such differences at baseline (see also Wilson, Smith, & Holmes, 2007).

Evidence from eye gaze research has also supported anxiety-induced impairments in performance efficiency and effectiveness. Williams, Vickers, and Rodriguez (2002) asked a sample of experienced Ping-Pong players to perform serves that need either a coffee cognitive demand (i.e., follow simple patterns) or a high cognitive demand (i.e., follow complex patterns) under low- and high-anxiety conditions. There was a rise in visual search rates with the utilization of foveal fixations instead of sight in both groups. The increase of visual search using foveal rather than peripheral fixations reflects a decrease in efficiency because daylight vision processes provide less task-relevant information compared to sight so more fixations are necessary to glean the same information. Also, although efficiency decreased (i.e., less efficient gaze behavior) under high anxiety in both low and high cognitively demanding tasks, decrements in performance effectiveness only occurred within the highly cognitively demanding task, thus supporting the predictions of the PET. Despite support for PET, it's unclear in PET which function of memory is impaired by anxiety, and why anxiety diverts attention from task-relevant to taskirrelevant stimuli. To bridge these limitations, Eysenck et al. (2007) modified PET to ACT.

Adopting the predictions of PET, ACT proposes that the detrimental effects of hysteria on attentional processes are fundamental to how anxiety exerts its influence on performance. Specifically, Eysenck et al. suggested that when experiencing increasing anxiety in performance settings, performers will allocate resources to detect the source of related threats. Such acts divert resources from a goal-directed (top-down) attentional system to a stimulus-driven (bottom-up) attentional system, thus increasing taskirrelevant thoughts and disrupting attentional control. Moreover, Eysenck et al. also made a precise prediction regarding the adverse effect of hysteria on memory. Drawing on Miyake et al.’s (2000) work on memory, ACT predicts that anxiety will impair the inhibition (i.e., resisting disruption or interference from task-irrelevant stimuli) and the shifting functions (i.e., reallocating attention to task-relevant stimuli) of working memory. Especially, when a performer experiences anxiety, the anxious feeling will make the performer less immune to task-irrelevant stimuli like worry (impairing the inhibition function). Simultaneously, the anxious feeling will prevent the performer from reallocating attention to the task, and can keep directing the performer’s attention to excessive worry (impairing the shifting function). The impaired inhibition and shifting functions account for the cognitive interference induced by anxiety.

The ACT has received support in sport psychology. For instance, Wilson, Vine, and Wood (2009) asked a gaggle of experienced basketball players to perform foul shot shooting while tracking their eye gaze fixations. There was a big reduction in eye gaze duration on the target (i.e., the restraint of the goal-directed attention system) and more fixations of short duration on various targets (i.e., the over activation of the stimulus-driven attention system), which accompanied the reduced performance. In another study of football penalty kicks, Wilson, Wood, and Vine (2009) found that football players fixated longer on the goalkeeper (i.e., participants were stimulus-driven) during a high- compared to a low-anxiety condition, which was liable for decreased shooting accuracy and supported the debilitating effect of hysteria on the attention system.

Bridging Skill-Focused and Distraction Theories

From a theoretical perspective, skill-focused theories and distraction theories are fundamentally different. However, since effort plays a task in both the skill-focused perspective and therefore the distraction perspective, it's possible that reinvestment within the skill focused perspective reflects a maladaptive use of effort whereas attentional control within the distraction perspective reflects an adaptive use of effort (Woodman & Hardy, 2001). In other words, sometimes performers try harder (but ineffectively; reinvestment) and sometimes performers try smarter (attentional control). Anxiety can cause a rise in on-task effort, and such effort may result in performance breakdowns (i.e., reinvestment), maintained performance (i.e., attentional control), or maybe increased performance (e.g., via greater effort). For instance, Mullen and Hardy (2000) found experienced golfers managed to take care of performance across low and high anxiety in either control or task-irrelevant conditions (i.e., dual-task distractions) but not in task-relevant conditions (i.e., reinvestment through conscious processing). Since effort increased similarly altogether these three conditions, it's possible that the failure to take care of performance within the task-relevant conditions was thanks to the inappropriate use of effort as a results of accessing unnecessary technical instructions.

Lam, Maxwell, and Masters (2009) also demonstrated similar findings. In their study, novice female basketball players were trained in either a particular or an implicit (analogy) learning group, and that they were asked to perform a basketball shooting task while concurrently responding to an equivalent auditory tone. While the increased effort within the explicit and implicit learning groups was comparable, only the performance of the specific group suffered. Wilson et al. (2007) also found some circumstantial evidence to support the coexisting phenomena of reinvestment and attentional control. These researchers found that high trait anxiety golfers increased mental effort and took longer to initiate a putt, but performed poorly under high (i.e., reflecting the possible use of maladaptive effort through reinvestment). In contrast, low trait anxiety golfers managed to take care of their normal performance under high despite increased mental effort and pre-putting time (i.e., reflecting the possible use of adaptive effort through attention control).

An increase in effort under high anxiety can cause both reinvestment and attention control. However, aside from different training methods (e.g., explicit versus implicit training) and personality traits (e.g., low versus high trait anxiety), less is understood about the circumstances under which anxiety may increase the likelihood of reinvestment or attention control.

Theory of Ironic Processes of Mental Control

While attempting to elucidate the anxiety-performance relationship, researchers mostly refer to the aforementioned skill-focused and distraction theories. Nonetheless, theories and models have also suggested other potential mechanisms via which anxiety may impair performance. One such candidate for providing an alternate explanation for anxiety-induced performance failure is that the Theory of Ironic Processes of Mental Control (TIP; Wegner, 1994, 2009). Central to the TIP may be a dual-control cognitive feedback system that results in both intentional (e.g., to realize good performance) and counter-intentional effects (e.g., to avoid bad performance). Such effects are achieved by two cognitive processes: the operating process and therefore the monitoring process. Consistent with the TIP, the intentional operating process is consciously guided to look for information consistent with intended goals. Conversely, the counter-intentional monitoring process is autonomously activated to look for information of undesirable states. The TIP suggests that the breakdown of this dual-control system under high cognitive load (e.g., anxiety) accounts for the ironic effect. Specifically, since the monitoring process identifies lapses in mental control, it keeps the mind sensitive to conditions indicating any failure of intentional control. When cognitive load (e.g., anxiety) is low, the supply of consciousresources will allow the monitoring process to reactivate the operating process to retain intentional control toward one’s desirable states. In other words, under low cognitive load, we will largely do what we would like to try to to. However, a high cognitive load occupies a large proportion of the limited conscious resources, which suppresses the operating process such one then has limited access to information regarding the desirable state. Under these circumstances, the autonomous monitoring process becomes prevalent by keeping the mind sensitive to the failure of intentional control; the monitoring process makes unwanted thoughts dominate one’s process, increasing accessibility to the states that one typically wants to avoid. The rise within the awareness of the to-be-avoided states results in a greater likelihood to try to to specifically what one wants not to do. This outcome is ironic because the monitoring process, which is generally responsible for ensuring successful execution of tasks, is directly liable for the breakdown of those tasks.

Bridging Skill-Focused and Distraction Theories

From a theoretical perspective, skill-focused theories and distraction theories are fundamentally different. However, since effort plays a task in both the skill-focused perspective and thus the distraction perspective, it's possible that reinvestment within the skill focused perspective reflects a maladaptive use of effort whereas attention control within the distraction perspective reflects an adaptive use of effort (Woodman & Hardy, 2001). In other words, sometimes performers try harder (but ineffectively; reinvestment) and sometimes performers try smarter (attention control).

Anxiety can cause an increase in on-task effort, and such effort may end in performance breakdowns (i.e., reinvestment), maintained performance (i.e., attention control), or even increased performance (e.g., via greater effort). As an example, Mullen and Hardy (2000) found experienced golfers managed to require care of performance across low and high anxiety in either control or task-irrelevant conditions (i.e., dual-task distractions) but not in task-relevant conditions (i.e., reinvestment through conscious processing). Since effort increased similarly altogether these three conditions, it's possible that the failure to require care of performance within the task-relevant conditions was because of the inappropriate use of effort as a results of accessing unnecessary technical instructions. Lam, Maxwell, and Masters (2009) also demonstrated similar findings. In their study, novice female basketball players were trained in either a specific or an implicit (analogy) learning group, which they were asked to perform a basketball shooting task while concurrently responding to the same auditory tone. While the increased effort within the explicit and implicit learning groups was comparable, only the performance of the precise group suffered. Wilson et al. (2007) also found some indirect evidence to support the coexisting phenomena of reinvestment and attention control. These researchers found that high trait anxiety golfers increased mental effort and took longer to initiate a putt, but performed poorly under high (i.e., reflecting the possible use of maladaptive effort through reinvestment). In contrast, low trait anxiety golfers managed to require care of their normal performance under high despite increased mental effort and pre-putting time (i.e., reflecting the possible use of adaptive effort through attention control).

An increase in effort under high anxiety can cause both reinvestment and attentional control. However, apart from different training methods (e.g., explicit versus implicit training) and personality traits (e.g., low versus high trait anxiety), less is known about the circumstances under which anxiety may increase the likelihood of reinvestment or attention control.

Theory of Ironic Processes of Mental Control

While attempting to elucidate the anxiety-performance relationship, researchers mostly refer to the aforementioned skill-focused and distraction theories. Nonetheless, theories and models have also suggested other potential mechanisms via which anxiety may impair performance. One such candidate for providing an alternate explanation for anxiety-induced performance failure is that the idea of Ironic Processes of Mental Control (TIP; Wegner, 1994, 2009). Central to the TIP could also be a dual-control cognitive feedback system that leads to both intentional (e.g., to understand good performance) and counter-intentional effects (e.g., to avoid bad performance). Such effects are achieved by two cognitive processes: the operating process and thus the monitoring process. according to the TIP, the intentional operating process is consciously guided to seem for information consistent with intended goals. Conversely, the counter-intentional monitoring process is autonomously activated to seem for information of undesirable states. The TIP suggests that the breakdown of this dual-control system under high cognitive load (e.g., anxiety)

accounts for the ironic effect. Specifically, since the monitoring process identifies lapses in mental control, it keeps the mind sensitive to conditions indicating any failure of intentional control. When cognitive load (e.g., anxiety) is low, the availability of conscious resources will allow the monitoring process to reactivate the operating process to retain intentional control toward one’s desirable states. In other words, under low cognitive load, we'll largely do what we might wish to attempt to. However, a high cognitive load occupies a large proportion of the limited conscious resources, which suppresses the operating process such one then has limited access to information regarding the desirable state. Under these circumstances, the autonomous monitoring process becomes prevalent by keeping the mind sensitive to the failure of intentional control, the monitoring  process makes unwanted thoughts dominate one’s process, increasing accessibility to the states that one typically wants to avoid. the increase within the notice of the to-be-avoided states leads to a greater likelihood to undertake to specifically what one wants not to do. This outcome is ironic because the monitoring process, which is usually responsible for ensuring successful execution of tasks, is directly responsible for the breakdown of these tasks.  The basic premise to agented emotion regulation is that the fear and hardship that are experienced in extreme conditions (e.g., roaring waves, stormy and cold conditions) are more identifiable than the underlying anxiety regarding domestic life (e.g., maintaining loving relationships). By approaching hazardous environments, individuals that suffer  from emotional difficulties (an underlying anxiety) in lifestyle gain the chance to identify momentarily the source of their unpleasant nebulous states—namely fear. In this sense, engaging during a high-risk sport enables individuals to catch up on their low efficacy in exercising control over their emotional life events by coping successfully with the fear in other perceived emotionally extreme environments. Barlow et al. (2013) also found that individuals participating in high-risk expeditionary sports have higher expectations regarding emotional regulation and agency, and can transfer the coping skills learnt from threatening events back to their lifestyle. In addition, Woodman, MacGregor, and Hardy (2018) reported that the necessity for emotion regulation and agency discriminated individuals engaging in high-risk sports from individuals who participate in other low-risk sports. Furthermore, these agentic emotion regulation difficulties accounted for the vanity benefits that are derived from successful engagement with high-risk domains. In general, the lesson from high-risk sports appears to be that fear-provoking situations are not necessarily what all individuals want to avoid; some individuals appear to approach anxiety-inducing situations so as to realize an intra- and interpersonal regulatory benefit. This regulatory process could also be of particular relevance to competitive sports. Indeed, the last word goal for sport competitors is to strive for peak performance. However, the ego-threatening competitive arena can induce high levels of fear and anxiety (e.g., fear of failure). As such, it might confer a competitive advantage if a competitor chose to compete precisely due to the anxiety that competition generates, in contrast to the competitor who competes while having to beat troublesome anxiety (see also Neil & Woodman, 2017; Roberts & Woodman, 2017).

Future Directions

While an outsized body of literature provides insight into how anxiety affects performance, several issues warrant further research. First, the extant literature has focused primarily on the effect of hysteria on performance outcomes instead of on the processes that underpin performance. Thus, it's unclear whether anxiety affects performance planning (e.g., offline movement planning), performance execution (e.g., online movement control), or both; and if both are affected, to what degree they're each affected (see Allsop, Lawrence, Gray, & Khan, 2017; Lawrence, Khan, & Hardy, 2013). This avenue of research is important because it'll help to point to where performance is breaking down within the  opposite possible avenue different to the situation-specific approach would be an integrative approach such the mechanisms underlying the anxiety-performance relationship as proposed in several theories and models might interactively account for performance effects. As an example, anxiety-induced reinvestment and distraction may together account for performance failure. Specifically, since reinvestment (e.g., step-bystep monitoring) requires cognitive resources, the extent to which distraction pre-empts working memory may determine the degree of adverse effect of reinvestment on performance. When distraction is high, increases in reinvestment could also be particularly problematic for performance because no extra resources are available to permit for a smooth performance execution additionally to such reinvestment. However, when distraction is low, a rise in reinvestment might not necessarily cause the breakdown of performance automaticity thanks to the possible compensatory function of additional resources. This position has yet to be tested directly but there's some indirect support from literature. Specifically, Gucciardi and Dimmock (2008) asked participants to generate three technique cues (i.e., arm, weight, and head) during a golf putting task and found such reinvestment impaired performance struggling, whereas Wilson, Chattington, Marple-Horvat, and Smith (2007) asked participants to get the position of their left compared to right (i.e., high, low, same) during a simulated rally driving task and located such reinvestment didn't impair performance. Such discrepancies may be thanks to the monitoring hand position during driving being less resource-consuming (i.e., less distractive) than monitoring technique cues during putting. the supply of extra resources may thus catch up on the negative influence of reinvestment in Wilson et al.’s driving task, which isn't the case in Gucciardi and Dimmock’s (2008) putting task. Nonetheless, the potential interaction between reinvestment and distraction is deserved further testing by manipulating the amount of both reinvestment and distraction using an equivalent performance task. Future research would have best to think about adopting an integrative approach to bridge different theories and models. Finally, individual differences, typically personality traits, have yet to receive much research attention within the anxiety-performance literature (see also Roberts & Woodman, 2015, 2016, 2017). However, a good range of personality traits may play vital roles in performance settings. for instance, optimism (e.g., Scheier & Carver, 1992), perfectionistic striving (e.g., Gaudreau, 2015), and mental toughness (e.g., Hardy, Bell, & Beattie, 2013) or hardiness (e.g., Hanton et al., 2013) or resilience (e.g., Sarkar & Fletcher, 2014), are traits that are thought to profit performance. Research on serial gold medal winners (Hardy et al., 2017; Rees et al., 2016) demonstrated that these traits successfully distinguished world-leading serial medaling athletes from their less successful (non-medaling) counterparts. Nonetheless, the literature has yet to ascertain a significant amount of research testing these traits in reference to different anxiety performance theories. Also, although existing evidence and theory suggests that individuals high in these traits should perform well, they're unlikely to perform well always. As such, it might be worthwhile to research the conditions under which individuals high in these traits may or might not perform well under high anxiety. Also, while many individuals may view anxiety-inducing or fear-provoking situations apprehensively, individuals high in either narcissism (Wallace & Baumeister, 2002; Woodman, Roberts, Hardy, Callow, & Rogers, 2011) or alexithymia (Roberts & Woodman,

2015; Woodman, Cazenave, & Le Scanff, 2008; Woodman et al., 2010; Woodman, Huggins, Le Scanff, & Cazenave, 2009) could be rather interested in high-pressure environments. Typically, anxiety-inducing and fear-provoking situations offer opportunities for glory/admiration (e.g., to perform at one’s best under stress, to demonstrate a capability to try to to what others cannot do) and for agentic emotion regulation (e.g., to manage one’s emotions in an easily identifiable fashion). These opportunities satisfy narcissists’ need for self-enhancement (Roberts, Woodman, & Sedikides, 2017) and the alexithymic need of intra- and interpersonal regulation (Woodman et al., 2018).

Therefore, individuals high in either narcissism or alexithymia are thought to be more capable of performing well in anxiety-inducing or fear-provoking situations compared to those low in these traits. However, research is unclear on whether possessing traits such as narcissism and alexithymia would make individuals experience fewer unpleasant states (e.g., experience less anxiety and thus perform well) or tolerate more readily unpleasant states (e.g., experience high anxiety and still perform well). Future research should consider testing the role of narcissism and alexithymia in these high-pressure performance settings. While research has generally treated personality traits as moderators of the anxietyperformance relationship, this approach is lacking in its applied value because personality traits are difficult to vary. for instance, although research is fairly conclusive that the performance of people high in certain traits like neuroticism (John & Srivastava, 1999) tends to suffer (e.g., Barlow et al., 2016), from an applied perspective it's difficult to form individuals less neurotic with a view to optimizing performance struggling. to supply valuable applied implications, it might be worth exploring potential moderators of the connection between certain personality traits and performance. as an example, Roberts, Callow, Hardy, Woodman, and Thomas (2010) assessed participants’ narcissistic traits and assigned them to either an indoor imagery group (i.e., imagining searching through one’s own eyes) or an external imagery group (i.e., imagining watching themselves from a third-person perspective) to perform during a low anxiety setting followed by a high-anxiety competition. Individuals high in narcissism improved performance only they used external imagery but individuals low in narcissism remained consistent in several conditions no matter different imagery perspectives. The findings suggest that external imagery perspective may be a tailored strategy that's particularly beneficial to individuals high in narcissism in anxiety inducing performance settings (e.g., competition; cf. Roberts, Woodman, Hardy, Davis, & Wallace, 2013). However, literature has yet to ascertain a big amount of research exploring the moderators of the effect of personality on performance in high anxiety settings. Future research within the field of individual differences in performance psychology should move forward to research the precise strategies tailored for different individuals to cope better with performance anxiety.

Conclusion

Anxiety and fear have dominated the eye of performance-focused psychology researchers. Research has revealed how anxiety may exert its influence on performance, and more recently how and why individuals could also be susceptible to suffer or to thrive in high-pressure environments. Although researchers have made much progress in understanding the mechanisms which may underlie the anxiety-performance relationship, future research will enjoy conducting more experimental work and exploring the largely overlooked field of individual differences within the context of performance psychology.

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