Competitive Anxiety Study

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The study being conducted was to help determine the type of competitive anxiety that athletes undergo and who experiences the higher levels of anxiety. During the experiment, an instrument was established to study anxiety in the framework of athletics, Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2). This is a questionnaire used to examine three different types of dimensions: cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety and self-confidence. Cognitive state anxiety is the mental factors of state anxiety that are characterized by uneasiness and apprehension. Somatic state anxiety is the arousal of physiological factors of state anxiety. Symptoms of somatic state anxiety would be an increased heart rate, high blood pressure, increased respiration, sweaty …show more content…

It was concluded that athletes who reported with elevated scores of self-confidence are more incline to report with decreased levels of cognitive and somatic anxiety, and vice versa. Meaning that an individual that scores high in self-confidence has a negative correlation in somatic and cognitive anxiety. More self-confident individuals tend to have less anxiety during the sport they play. This is an important conclusion because psychologists who attend to athletes with anxiety during the game have a better understanding of how to combat this. In the article it states, “When sport psychologists aim to help athletes control their pre-competition anxiety, it is suggested that these professionals emphasize the regulation and development of the self-confidence of the athletes”, which is supported by the hypothesis and …show more content…

I, myself, a female athlete, do not view myself as less self-confident compared to my male counterpart on the baseball team. I understand the viewpoint of gender roles and feel it plays a major role in this study. Also, the fact that this study is using only Brazilian athletes can conclude that this only applies to that specific culture and cannot be statistically true for that of American athletes. Therefore, I find this study inconclusive for American athletes but very true for that of Brazilians. It is an interesting point to be