Defining Anxiety and Arousal

Sports Psychology – Anxiety and Arousal

In this course, Dr Jamie Barker (Loughborough University) explores anxiety and arousal in sport and exercise. In the first lecture, we think about what anxiety and arousal are in the context of sport and exercise. In the second lecture, we think about some models of anxiety and arousal, including Yerkes and Dodson’s inverted-U hypothesis. In the third lecture, we think about catastrophe theory and the theory of challenge and threat states. Next, we think about some applied strategies which can be used to manage anxiety and arousal. In the fifth and final lecture, we think about how these concepts can be summarised.

Defining Anxiety and Arousal

In this lecture, we think about what anxiety and arousal are in the context of sport, focusing in particular on: (i) some examples of situations which can evoke anxiety in everyone, even just by imagining them; (ii) some sources of anxiety and arousal specifically for performing athletes; (iii) the role that anxiety and ‘nerves’ play in elite athletes; (iv) understanding anxiety as an emotional response to a perceived threat; (v) the three-dimensional construct of anxiety, comprising of a cognitive, somatic and behavioural aspects; (vi) the two types of anxiety as trait and state; (vii) methods of measuring anxiety in sport, including the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 and the Sport Anxiety Scale-2.