Chapter 11

1. CHAPTER 11
ANXIETY AND COPING IN SPORT:
THEORITICAL MODELS AND APPROACHES
TO ANXIETY REDUCTION

2. Ronald E. Smith & Frank L. Smoll

3. Objectives
•Discussed the nature of sport
performance anxiety.
•Distinguished anxiety from arousal and
stress and state anxiety from trait anxiety.
•Compare the four models of anxiety
reduction.

4. THE NATURE OF SPORTS
PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

5. Unlocking Difficulties
•Arousal-Cannon (1929) is a physiological
and energy mobilization in response to a
situation that threaten the physical
integrity of an organism.

6. Unlocking Difficulties
• Stress- is define in two ways.
First, it is used in relation to situation that
place significant demands to organism.
(Termed Stressors).
Second, refers to the response of
individuals to stressors.

7. Unlocking Difficulties
• Anxiety- is one variety of stress
response. It can be a transitory state
or a dispositional trait that
expresses itself across situation.

8. State Anxiety Vs Trait anxiety
•State Anxiety (A-state)- is characterized
by current worry and apprehension
concerning the possibility of physical and
psychological harm together with increase
physiological arousal resulting from the
appraisal of threat.

9. State Anxiety Vs Trait anxiety
•Trait Anxiety (A-trait)- it involves a
predisposition to respond with state
anxiety to competitive sports situation.
(Sports Performance Trait Anxiety)

11. • The main difference between
trait and state anxiety is that
state anxiety is fleeting,
whereas trait anxiety lingers
and is an inherent part of who
a person is. However, both
forms of anxiety can be
debilitating, and many people
may benefit from therapeutic
treatment.

12. Sport Performance State Anxiety
Worry, concentration disruption, somatic
Threat, worry
Cognitive
Anxiety
Approach,
Avoidance
Arousal
Potential
Somatic Anxiety
Cognitive
somatic and
behavioral
consequences
Competitive
Situation
• Demands
• Resources
Cognitive Appraisal Physiological Appraisal
• of demands -pattern
• Of resources -intensity
• Of consequences -duration
• Personal meaning
of consequences
Task-relevant and
task-irrelevant
responses
• Cognitive
• Physiological
• behavioral
P
E
R
F
O
R
M
A
N
C
E

13. Sports Performance Anxiety
Sports situation is capable of eliciting
many kinds of threat to an athlete but
the most salient sources of threat is the
possibility of failure and disapproval of
significant people evaluating in relation
with a standard of excellence.

14. Anxiety Reduction
Models
• THE EXTINCTION MODEL
• COUNTERCONDITIONING MODEL
• THE COGNITIVE MEDIATIONAL MODEL
• THE COPING SKILLS MODEL

15. THE EXTINCTION MODEL
•Derived from one of the Psychology of
Learning Theories “Classical Conditioning”
•It assumes that anxiety is a conditioned
emotional response.
• Anxiety is a conditioned response with the
previous stressful/painful experience.
1

16. THE EXTINCTION MODEL
•Example: A baseball player
was struck by a pitched ball
and suffered painful
fracture & eye injury. After
recovering from his injury
the athlete found out that
going to bat evoked intense
anxiety.

17. THE EXTINCTION of Anxiety
•To reduce the conditioned anxiety
response, expose the individual to the
anxiety-arousing stimuli in the absence of
the primary aversive stimuli, with which
the anxiety is originally paired. Instead of
totally avoiding the situation.

18. Two types of Extinction Model
1. Flooding Technique- it is exposing the
individual to anxiety provoking stimuli while
preventing the occurrence of avoidance
response.
•It involves the use of imagine scene or in
vivo (real life ) exposure to the feared
stimuli.

19. Two types of Extinction Model
2. Graded Exposure- exposure occurs in a
gradual manner either imaginal or real
allowing the extinction of low level anxiety
scenario to occur before proceeding to
stimuli that arouse stronger anxiety.

20. THE COUNTERCONDITIONING MODEL
•Jospeph Wolpe-key proponent.
•In order to suppress a conditioned
response you need to create a state that is
incompatible with physiological arousal in
response to the anxiety-inducing inputs.
2

21. THE COUNTERCONDITIONING MODEL
Stimulus
(Stressful Scenario)
Negative Physiological
Arousal
Relaxation
Anxiety Response
Lessen Anxiety
Response
Compatible Response
Incompatible Response

22. Systematic desensitisation
•The treatment devised by Wolpe, is design to
permit gradual counterconditioning of anxiety
using relaxation as the incompatible response.
•Theoretically, assertion, sexual activity
vigorous muscular activity, CO2 inhalation and
eating. (Alternative)

23. Systematic desensitisation
Process
1. Training Deep Relaxation-
Jacobson’s Progressive Relaxation.
2. Construction of anxiety hierarchy
3. Working through the anxiety,
learning to remain relax while
imagining the stimulus.

24. COGNITIVE MEDIATIONAL MODEL
•Robert T. Beck, Albert Ellis, Richard
Lazaruz, this theorist assumed that
emotional arousal is triggered by thought,
images, and other cognition rather than
being elicited by environmental cues.
3

25. COGNITIVE MEDIATIONAL MODEL
The Powerful means of reducing
maladaptive emotional response,
including anxiety is to modify the
cognitions that elicit and
perpetuates emotionality.

26. COGNITIVE MEDIATIONAL MODEL
•According to Ellis (1962) Maladaptive emotion are the
result of certain Irrational belief such as:
1. One must be thoroughly competent, adequate and
achieving in every way in order to be worthwhile.
2. It is a dire necessity to be loved or approved by virtually
every significant person.
3. It is catastrophic when things are not the way we would
like them to be.

27. Cognitive Restructuring
•It is derived from Ellis’s rational emotive theory.
•It is directed towards the modification of self-
defeating and irrational anxiety-eliciting
cognition.
•Usually involves four steps

28. Cognitive Restructuring Stages
1. Help the athlete recognize that his/her
belief, assumptions, perceptions or ideas
mediate emotional arousal.
2. Helping the athlete to identify some of the
underlying ideas and to recognize their
irrational and self-defeating nature.

29. Cognitive Restructuring Stages
3.The athlete is help to actively attack the
irrational ideas and replace them with
cognition that prevent or reduce maladaptive
anxiety.
4. Practice and rehearse the new mode of
thinking and apply them to relevant life
situation.

30. Self-Instructional Training
• It helps athletes develop and use specific task
relevant self-commands that direct attention
and improves performance.
•Self-instructional training helps individual
“talk to themselves” in ways that reduce
anxiety and focus attention on task at hand.

31. Self-Instructional Training
Phase 1: Preparing for the Stressor.
1. What is it I have to do?
2. I can work out a plan to deal with it.
3. Just rehearse in your mind how you’re going
to deal with it.

32. Self-Instructional Training
Phase 2: Confronting the Stressor.
1. Don’t think about fear, just about what I
have to do.
2. Take a deep breath and real. Ahh…… Good
3. My nervousness is just a cue to focus on the
task I can meet this challenges.

33. Self-Instructional Training
Phase 3: Coping w/ high level of anxiety.
1. Relax and slow things down
2. Keep your focus on the present. What is it I
have to do
3. Don’t try to eliminate all the stress. Just keep
it manageable

34. Self-Instructional Training
Phase 4: Post-event evaluation and self-
Reinforcement
1. What worked and what didn’t?
2. It didn’t work this time, but ill make the right
adjustment next time.
3. Way to go I handled that pretty well.

35. COPING SKILLS MODEL
•Coping-Lazarus and Folkman (1989) constantly
changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to
manage specific demands to manage specific
demands that are appraised as taxing or
exceeding the resource of a person.

36. Coping Strategies
Problem-focused
coping
Emotion-focused
coping
Seeking social
support
o Planning
o Active Coping
and Problem
Solving
o Suppressing
competing
activities
o Exercise restraint
o Assertive
confrontation
o Positive
reinterpretation
o Acceptance
o Denial
o Repression
o Escape-
avoidance
o Wishful thinking
o Controlling
feeling
o Help and
guidance
o Emotional
support
o Affirmation of
worth
o Tangible aid (e.g.
money)

37. Cognitive-Affective stress
management training
•It is an attempt to combine a number of
effective clinical technique into an
educational program for self regulation of
emotional responses.
•This include cognitive restructuring, self
instructional training, somatic and
cognitive relaxation skill for arousal
control.

38. Cognitive-Affective stress
management training
It can be divided into 5 partially overlapping
phases.
a. Pre-training assessment
b. Training rationale
c. Skill acquisition
d. Skill rehearsal
e. Post training evaluation

39. 1. Pre-training Assessment
•This program is devoted to assessing the nature
of there stress response, the circumstances
under which they occur, the manner in which
program is affected, and coping responses that
are being used.
•It is also directed towards athlete’s cognitive and
behavioral strength and deficits.

40. Pre-training Assessment
• Example:
During the pre-training assessment an
athlete who has good relaxation technique but
little control over self-defeating thoughts process
will tend to be focused on developing cognitive
skills.

41. Pre-training Assessment
• Interview, administration of Questionnaire
and rating skills and self monitoring by the
athlete.
•Athletes can also be asked to monitor the
frequency with which certain kinds thoughts
occur before during and after the competition.

42. 2. Training Rationale
•It is centered in conceptualization of problem to
ensure compliance and commitment of the
program. (Planning phase)
1. It’s not a psychotherapy but and educational
program that will enhance “Mental Toughness”.
2. The result will be determine by the amount of
Commitment the athlete shows to acquire the
skills.

43. 3. Skill Acquisition
• It focuses on the cognitive appraisal and
emotional arousal component of anxiety.
•Mastery of relaxation technique.
•Training in cognitive coping skills (ideas,
images, and self statement) are facilitated.

44. 4. Skill Rehearsal
•Consultant intentionally induces different levels
of stress and then arousal responses are then
reduced through the use of coping skills that the
participant has acquired
•A procedure called “Induced effect” is used to
elicit high level of emotional arousal and then the
athlete practices “turning-off” the emotional
arousal.

45. 5. Post-training Evaluation
• Variety of measures are used by the consultant
to assess the effectiveness of the program.
•Self monitoring of emotional state and cognitive
events by the athlete, standardized physiological
test scores.