KNPE265

Anxiety

Anxiety

Emotional state characterized by feelings of apprehension and tension and associated with activation (arousal) of the organism. Anxiety is linked with negative affect.

1. Elicited following an appraisal (evaluation)

2. Universal across people of all cultures

3. Has a distinct physiology

4. Observed through discrete facial expressions

5. Associated with unique set of action tendencies

Arousal

Describes a state of the organism and varies from deep sleep to intense excitement. A blend of physiological and psychological activation of an individual's autonomic nervous system. Synonymous with such words as activate, awaken, alert, or excite.

• Neither pleasant nor unpleasant

• Occurs from positive and negative events

Trait Anxiety

A person's general predisposition to perceive a situation as threatening or non-threatening

State Anxiety

Anxiety that is experienced at a particular moment in time and can change from moment to moment.

Cognitive Anxiety

Mental component of anxiety, referring to worries and concerns and a reduced ability to focus.

Somatic Anxiety

Physical component of anxiety, referring to perceptions of body states, such as clammy hands, a racing heart, or butterflies in the stomach.

Social Anxiety

A specific type of anxiety that often occurs during social situations (i.e., when other people are around).

• Occurs when people experience, or think they will experience, negative evaluations from other people

Social Physique Anxiety

A specific subtype of social anxiety that occurs when people are worried about receiving a negative evaluation about their bodies from others.

Competitive Anxiety

A specific subtype of social anxiety where athletes may be concerned about their body, their performance, their fitness level, or their skills being negatively evaluated by spectators, teammates, coaches, family, or friends.

Dimensions of the anxiety response

1. Intensity of Symptoms

2. Frequency of Cognitive Intrusions

3. Directional Interpretation of Symptoms

   • Anxiety can be perceived as either facilitative (positive) or debilitative (negative) to performance

Sources of Anxiety

• Gender differences

• Experience/skill

• Trait anxiety

• Self-presentation/confidence

• Self-regulation strategies

Sources of Anxiety - Gender Diffs

Mixed findings:

• Some studies show higher anxiety in female athletes

• Female exercisers often experience more social physique anxiety

• Appearance-focused exercise increases social physique anxiety in women

Sources of Anxiety - Experience and Skill Level

• Anxiety intensity doesn't significantly differ by skill level

• Skilled athletes see anxiety as facilitative

• Less skilled athletes view it as debilitative

• Competitive experience lowers anxiety and fosters a positive perception

Sources of Anxiety - Trait Anxiety and Personality Factors

• Personality traits influencing anxiety include:

  • Competitiveness

  • Extraversion

  • Hardiness

  • Neuroticism

  • Self-esteem

Sources of Anxiety - Self-Confidence and Self-Presentational Beliefs

• Beliefs about capability and presentation impact anxiety:

  • Confidence relates to lower pre-competition anxiety

  • Self-confident athletes see anxiety as readiness

  • Concerns about others' opinions increase anxiety

  • Body dissatisfaction raises social physique anxiety

  • Belief in self-presentational efficacy reduces social anxiety

Sources of Anxiety - Effective coping skills

• Relaxation

• Self-talk

• Cognitive restructuring

• Imagery

• Self-Handicapping Strategies

  • Used to excuse failures or claim success in advance

  • Can increase anxiety levels

  • May be seen as performance facilitators in some cases

In which way can the environment impact anxiety?

• Temporal

  • Ex. anxiety could be highest before competition

• Physical

  • Attributes/people in an environment can elicit an anxious response

Drive theory

• Suggests that performance is a function of two factors: habit strength and arousal, or drive.

• As Physiological Arousal Increases, Performance Improves

• According to this theory, higher levels of arousal lead to better performance

• Unfortunately, as tasks (such as competitive sport) become more complex, this theory has generally not been supported

Inverted-U hypothesis

• Suggests that performance improves as arousal increases, but only up to a certain point. After that point, increases in arousal will lead to poorer performance.

• Zone of optimal performance

• The optimal level of arousal differs from skill to skill.

Zone of Optimal Performance

• Some athletes performed best with high levels of state anxiety; others achieved superior performances with moderate or low levels of state anxiety.

• Athletes perform best when their anxiety levels are within their personally identified optimal zone.

Cusp Catastrophe Theory

• Describes combined influences of cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal on performance

• Recognizes athletic performance is complex

• Recognizes that the effects of cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal are interactive

1. When cognitive state anxiety is low, the relationship between physiological arousal and performance is uniform or an inverted-U shape

2. When physiological arousal is low, elevations in cognitive state anxiety are associated with enhanced performance relative to baseline

3. When physiological arousal is high, elevations in cognitive state anxiety are associated with declines in performance

4. When cognitive state anxiety is high, increases in physiological arousal can be positive for performance, but only up to a certain point

5. When physiological arousal is moderately high and cognitive state anxiety is high, it is predicted that a dramatic performance drop, called a catastrophe, will occur

How Does Arousal Influence Behaviours and Performance?

• Increased Muscle Tension and Coordination Difficulties (fine motor tasks)

  • Could make simple tasks easier however

• Attention Changes:

  • Narrowing of Attention

  • Shift to Dominant Style - However you naturally act

  • Attend to inappropriate Cues

Choking

• What is it and how is it influenced?

An acute, significant decrement in performance that occurs in situations of high pressure or anxiety, when typical levels of performance are expected.

Factors that influence choking

• Choking occurs due to attentional problems and self-focus

• Leads to consciously controlling movements, even for well-learned tasks, rather than performing them automatically
  Complex tasks more likely to lead to choking than simpler ones

• Environmental factors: The presence of evaluators can lead to increases in choking

Personality

A systematic variation in the way people think, feel, and behave.

• Emphasis on individual differences

• Every person is unique

Trait

A relatively stable characteristic or quality that may represent a portion of one's personality; a quality used to explain an individual's behaviour across time and situations.

States

Momentary feelings and thoughts that change depending on the situation and time

Big Five Personality Model

Suggests that all people can be described in terms of the prevalence of five global factors

A useful acronym to remember the Big Five is: OCEAN

1. Openness to experience (High: curious, imaginative, open to unconventional thinking) (Low: traditional, conservative, resistant to change)

2. Conscientiousness (High: responsible, goal oriented, dependable) (Low: impulsive, irresponsible)

3. Agreeableness (High: compatible, cooperative) (Low: competitive, less concerned with others)

4. Extraversion (High: outgoing, social) (Low: enjoy alone time, reserved)

5. Neuroticism (High: Anxious, emotional, little things cause disturbances) (Low: easy-going, less reactive)

Humanistic psychology

Focuses on personal responsibility, human growth, personal striving, and individual dignity.

• In this approach, each person's experiences, beliefs, values, and perceptions are emphasized in the present moment.

• Self-actualization - An individual's attempt to be the best he or she can be or a desire to fulfil one's potential.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Once basic needs are met, individuals strive to meet higher needs.

1. The base of the triangle represents physiological needs, such as food, water, sleep, and shelter. 

2. The second tier represents safety needs, provided in personal and social settings. 

3. The third tier to satisfy social needs: feelings of belonging, connections to others, and the acts of giving and receiving love. 

4. The fourth tier of the pyramid is for esteem needs, which can be internal (e.g., self-respect and achievement) or external (e.g., recognition and status).

5. Self-actualization

Cognitive-Behavioural Approach

Individuals' thoughts, perceptions, and interpretations of experiences contribute to personality.

• Behaviour is learned through experience

• Influenced by rewards and punishment

Social Learning Theory

People are active agents in shaping their behaviours, and are influenced by their inner drives and environments.

Observational Learning (Modelling)

• Observing, retaining, and replicating others' behaviours

• Focuses on how situations and individuals reciprocally influence each other.

Self-efficacy

One's belief in their ability to influence their environment

• Plays a crucial role in personality development

Biological/Evolutionary Psychology

• Personality can be moderately heritable, thus suggesting an evolutionary basis

• Belief that:

  • Individual differences in extraversion reflect differences in cortical arousal

  • Neuroticism is manifestation of individual differences in limbic activity

Interactionist approach

Interplay between a person and the environment that determines specific behaviours of the individual.

• Individuals bring specific experiences and dispositions to physical activity situation

Personality’s impact on exercise

• Extraversion and Conscientiousness

  • Small positive association

• Neuroticism

  • Small negative relationship

• Personality has minor association with exercise

Risk Taking

Involves narrowing physical and psychological safety margins

Sensation seeking

Sensation seeking people look for novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take multiple risks to obtain experiences.

Alexithymia

Involves the inability to identify one's emotions and to describe these feelings. Individuals with alexithymia more likely to participate in high-risk sports as compensatory strategy

Competitiveness

Desire to engage in and strive for success in sport achievement situations

Three dimensions of an athlete's desire to win

1. Competitiveness (the desire to enter and strive for success in sport competition).

2. Win orientation (a focus on interpersonal standards and winning)

3. Goal orientation (a focus on personal standards)

Harmonious Passion

Engaging in an activity as part of one's personal identity and for the pleasure of the activity.

Obsessive Passion

Involves a more rigid and uncontrolled urge to engage in activities because of external control or feelings of guilt.

• An athlete who demonstrates OP might be involved in sport to receive awards or enhance social status, or might feel compelled to engage to avoid feelings of guilt.

• OP can often conflict with other aspects of the person's life such as school, jobs, and interpersonal relationships

• Affiliated with negative outcome

Mental Toughness

A set of positive characteristics that allow the person to cope with challenging situations to attain important achievement goals.

• Psychological characteristics include: perceived control, competitiveness, concentration, confidence, commitment, determination, desire, focus, emotional intelligence, resilience, persistence, and optimism

• Requires continued practice of psychological skills

Perfectionism

A multidimensional personality disposition or trait that influences thought, emotions, and behaviour

Various types:

• Healthy and unhealthy perfectionism,

• Maladaptive and adaptive perfectionism,

• Personal standard perfectionism,

• Evaluative concerns perfectionism,

• Self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed perfectionism.

Is it alright to be a perfectionist?

It is ok to be a perfectionist to an extent. If it becomes an obsession and you cannot adapt, it is unhealthy.

Perfectionistic Striving

High personal performance standards, high self-oriented achievement striving

Perfectionistic Concerns

Negative social evaluation, excessive self-criticism, concerns over mistakes and doubts about actions

How do We Use Personality?

1. Selecting Athletes

2. Health and Well-being

3. Job Selection and Recruitment

4. Psychotherapy and Counseling

5. Education and Learning Styles

6. Leadership and Management

7. Consumer Behavior and Marketing

How to Measure Personality

1. Self-Report Questionnaires

2. Behavioural Assessments

3. Projective Tests:

4. Interviews

5. Biological Measures

6. Online and Digital Data

Self-Report Questionnaires

Examples of self-report questionnaires include the Big Five Personality Inventory (BFI),
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Behavioural Assessments

These methods involve observing and evaluating an individual's actual behaviours in various situations (how they react when winning, losing, competing with others, etc.).

Projective Tests

Examples include the Rorschach inkblot test

Interviews

Interviews can be structured or unstructured and are conducted by a trained assessor. Goal is to see how they react and how they are in a casual setting.

Biological Measures

Brain imaging techniques and physiological measures, such as heart rate variability, cortisol levels, or skin conductance, have been explored to study personality traits and their neural correlates. Allows us to see people's biological responses to certain situations

Online and Digital Data

Researchers have explored the use of online data (e.g., social media posts, online behaviors) to gain insights into personality characteristics

Motivation

The internal processes, such as your needs, thoughts, and emotions, that give your behaviour energy and direction.

Behavioural approach

An approach to understanding motivated behaviour that focuses on conditioning or learning from the environment.

Operant conditioning (and it’s aspects)

The athlete exerciser associates behaviours with consequences that are learned through reinforcement or punishment.

• Positive reinforcement involves any factor (usually a reward) that increases the probability of repeating that behaviour under similar circumstances.

• Negative reinforcement involves the removal of any factor (usually something aversive like criticism) that increases the likelihood of repeating the behaviour in a similar circumstance.

• Punishment is any factor that decreases the probability of repeating this behaviour in the future.

Vicarious conditioning

Results from observing others.

• Vicarious learning can be a particularly powerful source of motivation when the outcome (increased energy) or person is valued.

Operant strategies

Operant strategies, such as self-monitoring, are effective for developing and maintaining skills.

Cognitive Approaches

An approach to understanding motivated behaviour that emphasizes the role of thoughts and cognitive habits.

• Looks at the individual's interpretation of the external environment

• Automatic thought processes, cognitive errors, and core beliefs can be altered

Cognitive-Behavioural Approaches

Approaches to understanding motivated behaviour that outline the reciprocal influence between cognitions and behaviour.

• Based on two central tenets:

1. Cognitions influence emotions and behaviour.

2. Behaviour affects thought patterns and emotions.

Transtheoretical Model

A framework to understand how individuals initiate and maintain/terminate regular physical activity.

• The TM proposes that individuals move through a temporal sequence of five stages

Five Stages of the Transtheoretical Model

1. Precontemplation (individuals do not consider exercising in the next six months)

2. Contemplation (individuals seriously consider beginning exercise in the next six months),

3. Preparation (individuals have taken small steps toward becoming more physically active),

4. Action (individuals have begun exercising in the past six months)

5. Maintenance (individuals exercise and have done so for more than six months).

Factors influencing stage progression

1. Self-efficacy

• Belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the course of action required to produce specific outcomes

2. Decisional balance

• Set of values associated with advantages and disadvantages of behavioural change

3. Processes of change

• Strategies use to progress through the stages of change (seeking information, social support, goal setting, etc)

Application of the Transtheoretical Model

• Appealing at individual and population health level

• Guidelines provided at each stage of behaviour

• Messages specific to motivation to act

Theory of Planned Behaviour

Highlights personal/social factors as influencing intention of behaviour

Three main antecedents of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

1. Attitude reflects positive and negative evaluation of engaging

2. Subjective norms reflect social pressure to perform a behaviour that stem from personal (e.g., family, physicians) or environmental (e.g., media) sources.

3. Perceived behavioural control reflects extent to which behaviour is impeded via personal/environmental barriers

Applications of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

Interventions should focus on enhancing the individual's intention to exercise.

• Increase attitude towards physical activity by increasing the knowledge of exercise benefits.

• Target subjective norms by eliciting the support of others who are physically active.

• Target the individual's perceived behavioural control through a range of strategies.

The Intention-Behaviour Gap

• People do not always do what they intend to do.

• The intention-behaviour gap is influenced by: intentional stability, habit, affective judgement, identity, and implementation intentions.

Social Cognitive Theory

Personal, behavioural, and environmental factors influence behaviour.

• Reciprocal determinism is a central tenet

Reciprocal Determinism

Three sets of influences - person, environment, and behaviour - that all interact to influence one another.

Seven constructs embedded within social cognitive theory

1. Observational learning (observing others)

2. Goals (Ambitions that direct people's behaviour.)

3. Outcome expectations (Outcome expectations reflect beliefs that a given behaviour will produce a specific outcome)

4. Outcome expectancies (likelihood of achieving outcomes)

5. Self-regulation (self-directed)

6. Behavioural capacity (Behaviour is dependent on the individual’s knowledge, skills and tracking of behaviour)

7. Self-efficacy (belief in capabilities)

Influences on self-efficacy (social cognitive theory)

1. Mastery Experience

   • Past performance success and failure for similar behaviours influence self-efficacy

2. Vicarious Experiences

   • Modelled behaviours associated with development and change in self-efficacy

3. Social persuasion

   • Verbal and non-verbal feedback from significant, knowledgeable others.

4. Physiological and affective states

   • Physical and emotional cues associated with performance and behaviour.

Application of Social Cognitive Theory

• Reciprocal nature of social cognitive theory makes it possible for coaches or health promotion specialists to intervene on many levels

• Development of evidence informed mobile app for exercise that adopts the principles of social cognitive theory

  • Individuals using app engaged in more physical activity behaviours

Self-Determination Theory

• Global theory of human motivation and development

• People naturally endowed with innate tendencies for personal growth and development and flourish when social environments are optimal

• Autonomy

• Competence

• Relatedness

Three fundamental psychological needs that when fulfilled, promote the internalization of behaviour regulation towards more autonomous motives

Autonomy

Feeling ownership over behaviour, with actions stemming from a sense of choice and internal control.

Competence

Feeling effective and capable when facing challenging tasks

Relatedness

Experiencing meaningful connections with others, especially in contexts like sport and exercise

Intrinsic Motivation

• Intrinsic regulation represents the highest level of self-determination, where individuals engage in activities because they find them enjoyable and rewarding.

• Intrinsic motivation leads to curiosity, exploration, and a desire to master challenges.

Four forms of extrinsic motivation

• External regulation: Least self-determined, driven by external demands or contingencies.

• Introjected regulation: Motivated by avoiding negative emotions or maintaining self-worth.

• Identified regulation: Linked to personally valued goals, even if the activity itself may not be enjoyable.

• Integrated regulation: Motivated by the activity's alignment with one's identity.

Achievement goal theory

A theory of motivation that focuses on differences in how individuals evaluate competence and define success and failure.

• Depends on developmental and situational factors

Task goal orientation

• Focuses on past performance or knowledge as the origin of perceptions of competence.

• Opportunities for mastery and growth

• Emphasizing mastery, effort, improvement, and cooperation evokes task orientation

Ego goal orientation

Performance evaluations are based on comparisons with others as the determinant of competence

• Emphasizing competition, winning, and social comparison evokes ego orientation

Conscious Processes

Deliberate, slow, guided by beliefs and values, require cognitive processing, and are of limited capacity.

Non-conscious processes

Operate quickly, without awareness, are based on feelings, and require minimal cognitive resources.

• When dual processes are working in tandem, people navigate effectively through their environment

Application of Dual-Process Models

• Once conscious processes are repeatedly linked with a behaviour, non-conscious processes emerge.

• Recommendation of cue interventions are designed to train cognitive structures

Application of Non-Conscious Processes

• People who automatically associate exercise with appearance have lower intentions to exercise

• Automatic associations were stronger if exercise images were in an outdoor setting, sport-based, and included younger adults

Stress response

Physiological, cognitive, emotional, and behavioural reactions when we are faced with heavy demands.

Stress

An experience that is produced through a person-situation relationship that is perceived as taxing or exceeding the person's resources.

Stressors

External events, forces, and situations that have the potential to be interpreted as stressful.

Primary appraisal

An evaluation of what is at stake for a person in a situation. Whether or not something is at stake depends on whether the occur-rence is relevant to that person’s goals and whether the situation is interpreted as hav-ing the potential to be beneficial or harmful

Secondary appraisal

An evaluation of what can be done in the situation, which depends on an individual's available resources, level of perceived control, and expectations regarding what is likely to occur in the future.

Do the appraisals differ in importance?

While these evaluations about stressors are called primary and secondary appraisals, they are thought to be equally important and to occur very rapidly and at the same time.

Harm/loss appraisal

An evaluation of a situation in which psychological damage has already been done and the loss is irrevocable.

Threat appraisal

An evaluation or perception of a situation where an individual anticipates harm might occur or is likely to occur.

Challenge appraisal

An evaluation or perception that although there are obstacles in the way, they can be overcome.

Chronic stressors

Stressors that occur over a long period of time.