Do Anxious Swimmers Swim Slower? Reexamining the Elusive Anxiety-Performance Relationship

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to utilize a multidimensional measure of anxiety and a more sensitive intraindividual performance measure to evaluate the relationship between anxiety and performance. Three hypotheses were tested. First, cognitive anxiety is more consistently and strongly related to performance than is somatic anxiety. Second, somatic anxiety demonstrates an inverted-U relationship with performance, whereas self-confidence and performance exhibit a positive linear relationship and cognitive anxiety and performance exhibit a negative one. Finally, short duration and high and low complexity events demonstrate stronger relationships between somatic anxiety and performance than do long duration or moderate complexity events. Two samples of swimmers completed the CSAI-2 prior to competition, and performance data were obtained from meet results. Correlational and multiple regression analyses generally supported Hypotheses 1 and 3, while polynomial trend analyses on standardized CSAI-2 scores confirmed trends predicted in Hypothesis 2. Overall, these results not only revealed that improved instrumentation allows demonstration of consistent anxiety-performance relationships, but they also provided additional construct validity for the CSAI-2.