Perceptualand Motor Skills, 1992, 74, 800-502
O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1992
WHY IS LIFE STRESS IGNORED IN STUDIES OF 'STRESS' AND ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE? ' GARY FELSTEN A N D KATHY WILCOX
Summary.-Invest1g3t1ons of relationships between stress and athletic performance and stress and outcomes outside of sport psychology have a parallel evolution. Each area has advanced from early attempts to find simple, strong relationships to current strategies for evaluating the influences of individual differences and situational factors on more elusive relationships. However, the most common conceptualizations of stress are very different in research on sport psychology and stress, and most studies of stress and athletic performance do not involve the influences of stress outside athletics. We propose that the approaches used by sports psychologists and stress researchers could be combined to evaluate more fully the relationships between stress and athletic performance. There is no consensual definition of stress; stress is often viewed as a stimulus, a response, a process, or even a field of study. There are, however, dominant viewpoints, one being that stress is a process in which environmental demands are perceived to overtax (10) an individual's resources and cause a state of emotional anxiety and heightened physiological arousal (17). Recently, sports psychologists have focused on this emotional reaction (17) and generally view stress as elevated anxiety from the perceived demands of a specsic athletic event and expectations of poor performance (11). As such, sport-specific competitive anxiety arises shortly before an athletic event, affects that performance, and is assessed with state anxiety inventories. Sport psychologists have not ignored influences of personality on anxiety in sport; there is a rich literature on generalized and sport-specific trait anxiety. Research has been related to sport-specific state anxiery and to performance in sport; however, state measures of anxiety have generally been better predictors of performance than trait measures (11, 17). Sport-specific anxiety has been viewed as a unidimensional construct and more recently as a multidimensional one with cognitive and somatic components. I n the latter view (2, 5), cognitive anxiety is associated with expectations of poor performance and is characterized by worry, disturbing imagery, and reduced self-confidence, whereas somatic anxiety is associated with autonomic arousal and includes physiological responses such as rapid heart rate and sweaty palms (11). Different theoretical viewpoints have led to predictions of both negative linear and inverted U-shaped relationships between various anxiety constructs and athletic performance. Studies of anxiety and sport performance have produced inconsistent results. Unidimensional anxiety and athletic performance have most frequently been related as an inverted Ushaped function (171, but also been unrelated (16)or inversely related (19). Such inconsistencies have been attributed to the use of inventories that did not measure sport-specific anxiety or account for the multidimensional nature of anxiety (3). However, the use of refined anxiety measures alone &d not greatly clarify the picture. Cognitive or somatic sport-specific anxiety and sport performance have been reported to be unrelated (8, 12), inversely related (3), or related as an inverted U-shaped function (3, 8, 18.) in a variety of sports. As researchers became aware that simple, consistent relationships between sport-specific
'Address correspondence to Gary Felsten, Department of Psychology, 103 Rowley Laboratories, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY 13699.
STRESS AND ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE
801
anxiety and athletic performance were not likely to be identified, studies of individual differences that might influence these relationships increased. More sensitive measures of performance were required to replace imprecise and subjective measures as well as objective betweensubject measures that often do not account for individual differences in skill and conditioning (3, 8, 11). Consideration was made for the differing cognitive and motor demands of various sports, which may not be equally sensitive to the effects of anxiety (14, 18). Individual differences in expectations of self-efficacy and self-confidence affected athletic performance (3, 12, 18). In short, current investigations of relationships between sport-specific anxiety and performance have kept pace with the theoretical and methodological advances across psychology. Importantly, most studies of the relation of stress to athletic performance have ignored stress from outside the immediate context of the athletic event. Although sport-specific anxiety would be expected to have considerable effect because it is immediate, we question why influences of stress from other domains are generally ignored. There is no reason to believe that athletes do not encounter the same range of psychosocial stressors that others experience or that response to stress is different for athletes. Consequently, one would expect athletic performance to be sensitive to the effects of general life stress as is somatic and psychological well-being (7, 9) and performance on laboratory tasks and in academic and work situations (1, 4, 6 ) . Life stress is usually quantified as the perceived effect of undesirable encounters of person and envuonment reported on life-events or hassles inventories. There have been thousands of studies of relationships between life stress and well-being (9).As in sports psychology, stress originally accounted for only modest variance in outcomes, but refinements in assessment of stress and outcome measures and attention to individual differences that influence stress-outcome relationships have led to advances in evaluation of these relationships. Within sports, only a few studies have attempted t o relate life stress to performance. Mushers reported life stress was inversely related to the order of finish in the Iditarod Trail International Sled Dog Race (15) but not to race times for adult male runers in a half-marathon (13). The latter authors criticized the former for ignoring the efforts of the dogs and for using a relatively insensitive life-events survey but did not account for the reported relationship. Outcomes in the half-marathon were most strongly influenced by physical factors such as age and conditioning and perhaps also by the physical and psychological hardiness of the runners and the stress-buffering effects of running. Both studies included relatively insensitive between-subjects measures of performance that depended mostly on endurance and strength. We found no other published studies of life stress and athletic performance and suggest that progress in this area can be achieved by taking advantage of theoretical and methodological advances in both sports psychology and research on stress. Researchers should employ sensitive measures of performance that account for individual differences in skill and conditioning. Such measures have led to predicted relationships between sport-specific anxiety and athletic performance (3). The stress-buffering effects of personality factors such as locus of control, self-efficacy, and sport confidence should be evaluated, as these factors have been shown to moderate the effects of stress on somatic and psychological well-being and performance. Consideration should also be given to the cognitive and physical demands of the sport. Because cognitive components of both life stress and sport-specific anxiety would be expected to interfere with attentional processes and somatic components would be expected to impair fine motor activity, it is likely that performance in sports requiring high concentration and fine motor coordination would be more strongly affected by stress than performance in sports that primarily require strength or endurance. Sports such as gymnastics, diving, and figure skating might be particularly vulnerable. Finally, life-stress inventories should account for major stressors, daily hassles, and chronic stressors, whereas sport-stress inventories should measure precompetition anxiety. Interactions might be found among personality lactoe, life stress, athletic stress, and characteristics of the athletic event in the prediction of performance. Evaluating such interactions would provide a more complete understanding of stress-performance relationships in athletics
802
G. FELSTEN
&
K. WILCOX
and give a basis for developing effective interventions to reduce stress and improve performance. REFERENCES 1. BHAGAT, R. S. (1983) Effects of stressful life events on individual performance effectiveness and work adjustment processes within organizational settings: a research model. Academy of Management Review, 8, 660-67 1. 2. BORKOVEC, T.D. (1976) Physiological and cognitive processes in the regulation of anxiety. In G . E. Schwartz & D. Shapiro (Eds.), Consciousness and self-regulation: advances in research. Vol. 1. New York: Plenum. Pp. 261-312. 3. BURTON,D. (1988) Do anxious swimmers swim slower? Reexarmnlng the elusive anxiety-performance relationship. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 10, 45-61. 4. COLLINS, D. L., BAUM,A,, & SINGER,J. E. (1983) Coping with c h r u c stress at Three Mile Island: psychological and biochemical evidence. Health Psychology, 2, 149-166. 5. DAWDSON, R. J., & SCHWARTZ, G. E. (1976) The psychobiology of relaxation and related states: a multi-process theory. In D. Mostofsky (Ed.), Behavioral control and rnod$cation of physiological activity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Pp. 399-442. 6. DEMEUSE,K. P. (1985) The life events stress-performance linkage: an exploratory study. Journalof Human Stress, 4 , 111-117. 7. DOHRENWEND, B. S., & DOHRENWEND, B. l? (1978) Some issues in research on stressful life events. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 166, 7-15. 8. GOULD,D., P E T ~ H K O F L., F , SIMONS,J., & VEVERA,M. (1987) Relationship between Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 subscale scores and pistol shooting performance. Journal of Sport Psychology, 9, 33-42. R. H., & WORTMAN, C. B. (1985) Social factors in psychopatholo9. KESSLER,R. C., PRICE, gy: stress, social support, and coping processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 36, 531572. 10. LAZARUS, R. S. (1976) Patterns of adjushent. New York: McGraw-Hill. 11. MARTENS,R., BURTON,D., VEALEY,R. S., BUMP, L. A,, & SMITH, D. E. (1990) Development and validation of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2. In R. Martens, R. S. Vealey, & D. Burton (Eds.), Competitive anxiety in sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Pp. 117-190. 12. MARTIN, J. J., & GILL, D. L. (1991) The relationships among competitive orientation, sport-confidence, self-efficacy, anxiety, and ~erformance.Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 13, 149-159. 13. MCCUTCHEON, L. E., LUMMIS,G., & ELLIS, E . L. (1989) A re-examination of the link between stress and performance. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 69, 323-330. 14. OXENDINE, J. B. (1970) Emotional arousal and motor performance. Quest, 13, 23-32. 15. POPKIN,M. K., STILLNER, V., PIERCE,C. M., WILLIAMS,M., & GREGORY, l? (1976) Recent life changes and outcome of prolonged competitive stress. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 163, 302-306. 16. SCANLAN, T. K., LEWTHWAITE, R., &JACKSON, B. L. (1984) Social psychological aspects of competition for male youth sport participants: 11. Predictors of performance outcomes. Journal of Sport Psychology, 6 , 422-429. 17. SPIELBERGER, C. D. (1989) Stress and anxiety in sports. In D. Hackfort & C. D. Spielberger (Eds.), Anxiety in sports: an international perspective. New York: Hemisphere. Pp. 3-17. 18. TAYLOR, J. (1987) Predicting athletic performance with self-confidence and somatic and cognitive anxiety as a function of motor and physiological requirements in six sports. Journal of Personality, 55, 139-153. 19. WEINBERG, R. S., & GENUCHI,M. (1980) Relationship between competitive trait anxiety, state anxiety, and golf performance: a field study. Journal of Sport Psychology, 2 , 148154. Accepted April 7 , 1992
O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1992
WHY IS LIFE STRESS IGNORED IN STUDIES OF 'STRESS' AND ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE? ' GARY FELSTEN A N D KATHY WILCOX
Summary.-Invest1g3t1ons of relationships between stress and athletic performance and stress and outcomes outside of sport psychology have a parallel evolution. Each area has advanced from early attempts to find simple, strong relationships to current strategies for evaluating the influences of individual differences and situational factors on more elusive relationships. However, the most common conceptualizations of stress are very different in research on sport psychology and stress, and most studies of stress and athletic performance do not involve the influences of stress outside athletics. We propose that the approaches used by sports psychologists and stress researchers could be combined to evaluate more fully the relationships between stress and athletic performance. There is no consensual definition of stress; stress is often viewed as a stimulus, a response, a process, or even a field of study. There are, however, dominant viewpoints, one being that stress is a process in which environmental demands are perceived to overtax (10) an individual's resources and cause a state of emotional anxiety and heightened physiological arousal (17). Recently, sports psychologists have focused on this emotional reaction (17) and generally view stress as elevated anxiety from the perceived demands of a specsic athletic event and expectations of poor performance (11). As such, sport-specific competitive anxiety arises shortly before an athletic event, affects that performance, and is assessed with state anxiety inventories. Sport psychologists have not ignored influences of personality on anxiety in sport; there is a rich literature on generalized and sport-specific trait anxiety. Research has been related to sport-specific state anxiery and to performance in sport; however, state measures of anxiety have generally been better predictors of performance than trait measures (11, 17). Sport-specific anxiety has been viewed as a unidimensional construct and more recently as a multidimensional one with cognitive and somatic components. I n the latter view (2, 5), cognitive anxiety is associated with expectations of poor performance and is characterized by worry, disturbing imagery, and reduced self-confidence, whereas somatic anxiety is associated with autonomic arousal and includes physiological responses such as rapid heart rate and sweaty palms (11). Different theoretical viewpoints have led to predictions of both negative linear and inverted U-shaped relationships between various anxiety constructs and athletic performance. Studies of anxiety and sport performance have produced inconsistent results. Unidimensional anxiety and athletic performance have most frequently been related as an inverted Ushaped function (171, but also been unrelated (16)or inversely related (19). Such inconsistencies have been attributed to the use of inventories that did not measure sport-specific anxiety or account for the multidimensional nature of anxiety (3). However, the use of refined anxiety measures alone &d not greatly clarify the picture. Cognitive or somatic sport-specific anxiety and sport performance have been reported to be unrelated (8, 12), inversely related (3), or related as an inverted U-shaped function (3, 8, 18.) in a variety of sports. As researchers became aware that simple, consistent relationships between sport-specific
'Address correspondence to Gary Felsten, Department of Psychology, 103 Rowley Laboratories, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY 13699.
STRESS AND ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE
801
anxiety and athletic performance were not likely to be identified, studies of individual differences that might influence these relationships increased. More sensitive measures of performance were required to replace imprecise and subjective measures as well as objective betweensubject measures that often do not account for individual differences in skill and conditioning (3, 8, 11). Consideration was made for the differing cognitive and motor demands of various sports, which may not be equally sensitive to the effects of anxiety (14, 18). Individual differences in expectations of self-efficacy and self-confidence affected athletic performance (3, 12, 18). In short, current investigations of relationships between sport-specific anxiety and performance have kept pace with the theoretical and methodological advances across psychology. Importantly, most studies of the relation of stress to athletic performance have ignored stress from outside the immediate context of the athletic event. Although sport-specific anxiety would be expected to have considerable effect because it is immediate, we question why influences of stress from other domains are generally ignored. There is no reason to believe that athletes do not encounter the same range of psychosocial stressors that others experience or that response to stress is different for athletes. Consequently, one would expect athletic performance to be sensitive to the effects of general life stress as is somatic and psychological well-being (7, 9) and performance on laboratory tasks and in academic and work situations (1, 4, 6 ) . Life stress is usually quantified as the perceived effect of undesirable encounters of person and envuonment reported on life-events or hassles inventories. There have been thousands of studies of relationships between life stress and well-being (9).As in sports psychology, stress originally accounted for only modest variance in outcomes, but refinements in assessment of stress and outcome measures and attention to individual differences that influence stress-outcome relationships have led to advances in evaluation of these relationships. Within sports, only a few studies have attempted t o relate life stress to performance. Mushers reported life stress was inversely related to the order of finish in the Iditarod Trail International Sled Dog Race (15) but not to race times for adult male runers in a half-marathon (13). The latter authors criticized the former for ignoring the efforts of the dogs and for using a relatively insensitive life-events survey but did not account for the reported relationship. Outcomes in the half-marathon were most strongly influenced by physical factors such as age and conditioning and perhaps also by the physical and psychological hardiness of the runners and the stress-buffering effects of running. Both studies included relatively insensitive between-subjects measures of performance that depended mostly on endurance and strength. We found no other published studies of life stress and athletic performance and suggest that progress in this area can be achieved by taking advantage of theoretical and methodological advances in both sports psychology and research on stress. Researchers should employ sensitive measures of performance that account for individual differences in skill and conditioning. Such measures have led to predicted relationships between sport-specific anxiety and athletic performance (3). The stress-buffering effects of personality factors such as locus of control, self-efficacy, and sport confidence should be evaluated, as these factors have been shown to moderate the effects of stress on somatic and psychological well-being and performance. Consideration should also be given to the cognitive and physical demands of the sport. Because cognitive components of both life stress and sport-specific anxiety would be expected to interfere with attentional processes and somatic components would be expected to impair fine motor activity, it is likely that performance in sports requiring high concentration and fine motor coordination would be more strongly affected by stress than performance in sports that primarily require strength or endurance. Sports such as gymnastics, diving, and figure skating might be particularly vulnerable. Finally, life-stress inventories should account for major stressors, daily hassles, and chronic stressors, whereas sport-stress inventories should measure precompetition anxiety. Interactions might be found among personality lactoe, life stress, athletic stress, and characteristics of the athletic event in the prediction of performance. Evaluating such interactions would provide a more complete understanding of stress-performance relationships in athletics
802
G. FELSTEN
&
K. WILCOX
and give a basis for developing effective interventions to reduce stress and improve performance. REFERENCES 1. BHAGAT, R. S. (1983) Effects of stressful life events on individual performance effectiveness and work adjustment processes within organizational settings: a research model. Academy of Management Review, 8, 660-67 1. 2. BORKOVEC, T.D. (1976) Physiological and cognitive processes in the regulation of anxiety. In G . E. Schwartz & D. Shapiro (Eds.), Consciousness and self-regulation: advances in research. Vol. 1. New York: Plenum. Pp. 261-312. 3. BURTON,D. (1988) Do anxious swimmers swim slower? Reexarmnlng the elusive anxiety-performance relationship. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 10, 45-61. 4. COLLINS, D. L., BAUM,A,, & SINGER,J. E. (1983) Coping with c h r u c stress at Three Mile Island: psychological and biochemical evidence. Health Psychology, 2, 149-166. 5. DAWDSON, R. J., & SCHWARTZ, G. E. (1976) The psychobiology of relaxation and related states: a multi-process theory. In D. Mostofsky (Ed.), Behavioral control and rnod$cation of physiological activity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Pp. 399-442. 6. DEMEUSE,K. P. (1985) The life events stress-performance linkage: an exploratory study. Journalof Human Stress, 4 , 111-117. 7. DOHRENWEND, B. S., & DOHRENWEND, B. l? (1978) Some issues in research on stressful life events. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 166, 7-15. 8. GOULD,D., P E T ~ H K O F L., F , SIMONS,J., & VEVERA,M. (1987) Relationship between Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 subscale scores and pistol shooting performance. Journal of Sport Psychology, 9, 33-42. R. H., & WORTMAN, C. B. (1985) Social factors in psychopatholo9. KESSLER,R. C., PRICE, gy: stress, social support, and coping processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 36, 531572. 10. LAZARUS, R. S. (1976) Patterns of adjushent. New York: McGraw-Hill. 11. MARTENS,R., BURTON,D., VEALEY,R. S., BUMP, L. A,, & SMITH, D. E. (1990) Development and validation of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2. In R. Martens, R. S. Vealey, & D. Burton (Eds.), Competitive anxiety in sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Pp. 117-190. 12. MARTIN, J. J., & GILL, D. L. (1991) The relationships among competitive orientation, sport-confidence, self-efficacy, anxiety, and ~erformance.Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 13, 149-159. 13. MCCUTCHEON, L. E., LUMMIS,G., & ELLIS, E . L. (1989) A re-examination of the link between stress and performance. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 69, 323-330. 14. OXENDINE, J. B. (1970) Emotional arousal and motor performance. Quest, 13, 23-32. 15. POPKIN,M. K., STILLNER, V., PIERCE,C. M., WILLIAMS,M., & GREGORY, l? (1976) Recent life changes and outcome of prolonged competitive stress. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 163, 302-306. 16. SCANLAN, T. K., LEWTHWAITE, R., &JACKSON, B. L. (1984) Social psychological aspects of competition for male youth sport participants: 11. Predictors of performance outcomes. Journal of Sport Psychology, 6 , 422-429. 17. SPIELBERGER, C. D. (1989) Stress and anxiety in sports. In D. Hackfort & C. D. Spielberger (Eds.), Anxiety in sports: an international perspective. New York: Hemisphere. Pp. 3-17. 18. TAYLOR, J. (1987) Predicting athletic performance with self-confidence and somatic and cognitive anxiety as a function of motor and physiological requirements in six sports. Journal of Personality, 55, 139-153. 19. WEINBERG, R. S., & GENUCHI,M. (1980) Relationship between competitive trait anxiety, state anxiety, and golf performance: a field study. Journal of Sport Psychology, 2 , 148154. Accepted April 7 , 1992
