Each athlete has his/her own zone of optimal performance anxiety which he/she is most likely to attain optimal performance. If anxiety lies out with this zone, performance will be impaired. This can be derived by direct and repeated measurement of anxiety levels and subsequent performance or by recall of anxiety levels prior to a peak performance.
Support
Turner and Raglin found that track and field athletes who competed with anxiety levels within their estimated IZOF performed significantly better than those who competed with anxiety levels out with their estimated IZOF zones.
Woodman et al observed that 10 pin bowling performance was also better when bowlers combined cognitive and somatic anxiety scores were within their IZOF than those not.
Against
Hann’s IZOF constitutes what is essentially an individual differences theory without any individual differences variables.
Also has no predictive powers as it cant describe what the zone is for a group of people, just for each individual.
Therefore despite encouraging applied data IZOF remains an intuitive applied tool that has yet little theoretical value.
Multi-dimensional Anxiety Theory
- Antecedents of cognitive and somatic anxiety are different and these are differentially related to performance.
- Cognitive anxiety is negatively related to performance due to the fact that worrying uses up precious cognitive resources and so are therefore not available for the task at hand. Somatic anxiety has an inverted U relationship with performance but does not offer an explanation why – which is poor. However Weinberg suggested that it was because too much muscular tension may lead to a deterioration in performance. The model also proposes that self confidence has a positive relationship with performance.
Support
Burton (1988) study of swimmers found results consistent with all 3 hypotheses made. However Raglin reviewed 8 studies and found Burton’s results to be the only one to support all 3 predictions. These inconsistencies may be due to inappropriate performance measures and individual differences. Gould decided to control for these factor and found no relationship between 2 of the hypotheses but the did find an inverted u relationship with somatic anxiety.
Therefore support at best is mixed.
Major problem though is that it tries to explain a 4 dimensional relationship between somatic anxiety, cognitive anxiety, self confidence and performance in a series to 2 dimensional relationships.
Hardy’s Catastrophe Model (1990)
Hardy seeked to rectify this problem and examined the 3 dimensional relationship between cognitive anxiety, physiological arousal and performance.
Cognitive anxiety is termed the splitting factor as it determines whether the effect of physiological arousal will be smooth and small or large and catastrophic or somewhere between these 2 extremes.
- Increases in cognitive anxiety is good under conditions of low physiological arousal but detrimental under high physiological arousal.
- Under low cognitive anxiety, changes in physiological arousal will be small and smooth (inverted U), high physiological arousal can cause large and discontinous changes in performance in the form of hysteris i.e performance will depend on whether arousal is decreasing or increasing. (Diagram) When physiological arousal increases from a low level performance will increase up to a point, beyond this point performance will suffer a large drop. Once a catastrophe has occurred a reduction in physiological arousal is required.
Support
Research to date has generally provided support for this model.
Hardy and Parfitt found evidence for the hysteresis effect with a sample of basketball players. Specifically found the relationship between physiological arousal and performance under low cognitive arousal to follow a mild inverted U but hysteresis under high cog anxiety.
It was also good to measure physiological arousal as this can exert both direct and indirect effects on performance whereas cognitive anxiety can only exert indirect effects. This is because somatic anxiety is only a perception of one’s physical symptoms and so can get it wrong. E.g a gymnast may perceive themselves to be physically relaxed but may in fact have high muscular tension which may affect their performance.
This model can be stretched, rotated or bent in a variety of different shapes and is therefore versatile.
But
This model is not a theory and does not give an explanation of why these relationships occur.
No studies have investigated the catastrophe model by manipulating anxiety-induced physiological arousal, therefore further research is needed with respect to this.
Conclusion
There are 4 main models which attempt to explain the relationship between anxiety and performance: Inverted-U-Hypthesis, IZOF, multi-dimensional anxiety theory and the catastrophe model. The Inverted U hypothesis is said to be too simplistic and offers no explanation of how anxiety affects performance. IZOF has encouraging applied data but lacks theoretical value. There is little support for the Multi-dimensional anxiety model as it tries to explain a 4-dimensional relationship in a series of 2-dimensional relationships. Hardy’s catastophe model has been the most successful of the models as it is the only model to predict the interaction between cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal. This model has also received the most support and therefore is most worthy of further investigation.
