Distinguish arousal from the types of anxiety, sketch and evaluate drive, inverted U, IZOF, multidimensional and catastrophe theories, and evaluate how anxiety is measured.
Each is in the SEHS glossary, with every other term in the subject.
A negative emotional state characterised by nervousness, worry and apprehension, associated with activation or arousal of the body.
The level of physiological and psychological activation of a person, varying on a continuum from deep sleep to intense excitement.
A theory proposing that when cognitive anxiety is high, rising physiological arousal improves performance up to a threshold, beyond which performance drops suddenly and dramatically rather than gradually.
The mental component of anxiety, consisting of worry, negative expectations about performance and concern about the consequences of failure.
The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2, a self-report questionnaire measuring state cognitive anxiety, state somatic anxiety and self-confidence before competition; a revised 17-item version is the CSAI-2R.
The most likely, habitual response of a performer in a situation; increased arousal makes it more likely to occur, whether it is correct or incorrect.
A theory proposing a positive linear relationship between arousal and performance, in which increased arousal makes the dominant response more likely, improving well-learned skills and impairing new ones.
Define arousal and describe its physiological and psychological signs.
Distinguish between stress, arousal and anxiety, between state and trait anxiety, and between cognitive and somatic anxiety.
Sketch and explain drive theory, and evaluate it using the idea of the dominant response.
Sketch and explain inverted U theory, including how optimal arousal varies with the type of skill, experience and personality, and evaluate it.
Explain the individual zone of optimal functioning (IZOF) and compare zones for different athletes.
Describe the positive and negative emotions linked with low and high anxiety, and outline the facilitative and debilitative interpretation of anxiety.
Sketch and explain multidimensional anxiety theory and catastrophe theory, including hysteresis, and explain why arousal alone cannot explain the effect of anxiety on performance.
Evaluate subjective and objective methods of measuring anxiety.
Apply arousal and anxiety theories to real sporting performances, including choking.
Arousal and anxiety describe how activated and how worried a person is before and during performance. They help explain why the same athlete can produce a personal best in one final and fall apart in another, and why the ideal mental state before a weightlifting attempt is very different from the ideal state before an archery shot.
The topic matters through both lenses. For performance, athletes and coaches try to manage the level of intensity so that it suits the task, through warm-ups, routines and psychological skills. For health, anxiety is one of the most common mental health problems in young people, and understanding how it shows itself in the body and mind, and how it can be measured, is the first step towards supporting athletes and exercisers who struggle with it.
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Anxiety symptoms that a performer interprets as helpful to performance, as a sign of readiness; the opposite interpretation, as harmful to performance, is debilitative anxiety.
An objective measure of arousal based on the electrical conductance of the skin, which increases as sweat gland activity rises with sympathetic nervous system activation.
In catastrophe theory, the finding that after a performance collapse, arousal must fall well below the level at which the collapse occurred before performance can recover.
A band of pre-competition anxiety or emotional intensity within which an individual athlete performs best; the zone may be low, moderate or high and differs between athletes.
A theory that performance improves as arousal increases up to an optimal, moderate level, after which further increases in arousal cause performance to decline.
A theory proposing that cognitive anxiety has a negative linear relationship with performance, somatic anxiety an inverted U relationship, and self-confidence a positive linear relationship.
The level of arousal at which a performer produces their best performance for a given task; it is lower for fine or complex skills and beginners and higher for gross, simple skills and experts.
The physical component of anxiety: the perception of bodily symptoms of arousal, such as raised heart rate, sweating, muscle tension and butterflies in the stomach.
The Sport Competition Anxiety Test, a self-report questionnaire measuring competitive trait anxiety, the general tendency of an individual to feel anxious in competitive sport situations.
A temporary, changing emotional state of nervousness and apprehension in a specific situation, such as the minutes before a race.
A relatively stable personality characteristic; a general tendency to perceive situations as threatening and to respond with high state anxiety.
Arousal is the general level of physical and psychological activation of a person. It varies on a continuum from deep sleep, at the lowest level, to intense excitement or panic at the highest. Arousal itself is neither good nor bad: an athlete can be highly aroused and delighted on a winning podium, or highly aroused and terrified before a penalty.
Rising arousal is driven by the sympathetic nervous system and by the release of the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine from the adrenal glands. Together they prepare the body for action, the "fight or flight" response. The physiological signs are therefore the effects of sympathetic stimulation.
Physiological signs (body) | Psychological signs (mind) |
|---|---|
Increased heart rate and stroke volume | Greater alertness and readiness to act |
Increased breathing rate | Narrowing of attention (fewer cues processed) |
Increased blood pressure | Feeling "pumped up", energised or excited |
Increased sweating (measurable as skin conductance) | At high levels, difficulty making decisions |
Increased muscle tension; trembling at high levels | At high levels, feelings of nervousness or loss of control |
Dilated pupils; dry mouth; "butterflies" in the stomach as blood flow to the gut falls | Faster thinking, but sometimes racing or scattered thoughts |
The opposite branch of the autonomic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, lowers arousal by slowing the heart and breathing. Relaxation techniques work by increasing parasympathetic activity, which is why slow breathing before a free throw can bring heart rate down within seconds.
YouTubeThree terms are often confused in everyday speech. In sport psychology they have separate meanings.
A stressor is a demand placed on a person, such as a final, a selection trial or a hostile crowd. Stress is the process in which a person perceives that the demand may exceed their ability to cope, and responds to it. Stressors and coping are developed fully with coping strategies.
Arousal is the level of activation that results. It can rise because of a stressor, but also because of excitement, caffeine or a good warm-up.
Anxiety is a negative emotional state that occurs when arousal is accompanied by worry, nervousness and apprehension.
Drive theory was developed from the work of Clark Hull in the 1940s and later Kenneth Spence. It was the first attempt to describe the relationship between arousal and performance. It proposes a positive, linear relationship: as arousal (drive) increases, performance increases.
The theory is often summarised as an equation, in which performance (P) depends on drive (D, arousal) multiplied by habit (H, how well the skill has been learned):
The key idea is the dominant response. This is the response a performer is most likely to produce, the one that has become habitual. As arousal rises, the dominant response becomes more likely. For an expert in the autonomous phase, the dominant response is the correct technique, so higher arousal improves performance. For a beginner in the cognitive phase, the dominant response is often incorrect, so higher arousal makes errors more likely.
Drive theory fits some observations. Experienced weightlifters and sprinters often produce their best performances in front of large crowds, and novices often make more mistakes when watched. It also explains why coaches avoid putting beginners under heavy pressure: arousal brings out their habitual errors.
Strengths | Limitations |
|---|---|
Simple, and explains why novices perform worse under pressure while some experts improve. | Even experts perform worse at very high arousal; the straight line has little support in research. |
Introduces the important idea of the dominant response and links arousal to the phase of learning. | Does not explain why experts choke on well-learned skills such as a short putt or a penalty. |
Suits gross, simple skills such as a sprint start or a tackle, where high arousal helps. | Treats arousal as one dimension and ignores how it is interpreted (excitement vs worry). |
Many sports skills are too complex to classify simply as "well learned" or "new". |
On balance, drive theory is useful mainly for its idea of the dominant response and for simple, well-learned gross skills. As a general account of arousal and performance it is weak, because it cannot explain the decline in expert performance at very high arousal, which led to inverted U theory.
Inverted U theory proposes that performance improves as arousal increases up to an optimal level, and then deteriorates as arousal rises further. It grew out of experiments published in 1908 by Robert Yerkes and John Dodson, who trained “dancing mice” to choose the lighter of two compartments, using electric shocks of different strengths as the stimulus. For a difficult discrimination, learning was fastest at an intermediate shock strength, while for an easy discrimination stronger shocks continued to help. It is sometimes called the Yerkes–Dodson law.
Under-arousal (low arousal): the performer lacks activation and motivation, attention is too broad and wanders, effort is low. A top tennis player can lose to a much weaker opponent early in a tournament for this reason.
Optimal arousal (moderate): activation is right for the task. Attention narrows to the relevant cues, effort is high and the performer feels in control. This is the peak of the curve.
Over-arousal (high arousal): muscle tension increases, coordination suffers, attention narrows so much that relevant cues are missed and decisions are hurried. Performance falls, often gradually but sometimes sharply.
The fall in performance at high arousal is explained partly by attentional narrowing, described by cue utilisation theory: as arousal rises, attention narrows from too broad, to just right, to so narrow that relevant cues are lost. Cue utilisation theory provides an attentional mechanism for the shape of the inverted U.
The optimal point is not the same for everyone or every task. Three groups of factors move it to the left (a lower optimal arousal) or to the right (a higher optimal arousal).
Factor | Lower optimal arousal | Higher optimal arousal | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
Type of skill: gross or fine | Fine skills: archery, snooker, darts | Gross skills: weightlifting, shot put, sprint start | Fine skills need precise control of small muscles, which tension and trembling disrupt; gross skills benefit from extra force. |
Type of skill: complexity | Complex skills with many decisions: a quarterback reading a defence | Simple skills with few decisions: a rugby tackle | Complex skills need broad attention to many cues, which narrowing removes. |
Experience and stage of learning | Beginners (cognitive phase) | Experts (autonomous phase) | Experts need little attention for the movement itself, so they tolerate more arousal before errors appear. |
Personality | Introverts, and people high in trait anxiety | Extraverts | In Eysenck’s view, introverts have a higher baseline arousal, so less extra arousal takes them to their optimal point; people high in extraversion seek stimulation and tolerate more. |
Inverted U theory improves on drive theory because it explains why too much arousal harms even experts, and it is easy for coaches to apply. It also fits everyday experience: athletes recognise the flatness of a dull friendly and the tension of a final. Yet it has three important weaknesses.
Shape: the theory predicts a smooth, gradual decline after the peak. Real performances under pressure sometimes collapse suddenly, which catastrophe theory explains better.
Single point: it proposes one optimal point at a moderate level, but athletes often perform best over a range of arousal, and that range differs widely between people, which IZOF addresses.
One dimension: it treats arousal as a single dimension and ignores whether it is experienced as excitement or worry. Two athletes with the same heart rate may feel and perform very differently, which multidimensional theories address.
Measuring arousal is also difficult: heart rate, self-report and observation often disagree, so the curve is hard to test precisely. Inverted U theory is therefore best seen as a useful general description and a basis for coaching, rather than a precise prediction for an individual athlete.
The Russian sport psychologist Yuri Hanin developed the individual zone of optimal functioning (IZOF) from studies of elite athletes. He found that the level of pre-competition anxiety at which athletes performed best differed greatly between individuals, and that their best performances came within a range, not at a single point.
IZOF differs from the inverted U in two ways. First, optimal functioning is a zone, a bandwidth, not a single point. Second, the zone is individual: it is not necessarily in the middle of the continuum. Some athletes perform best at high anxiety, others at very low anxiety, even within the same sport.
An athlete’s zone is usually found by measuring anxiety before many competitions, or by asking the athlete to recall how anxious they felt before their best performances, and then identifying the band around those values. The coach and athlete then aim to enter that zone before competition, by raising or lowering activation as needed. Hanin later broadened the model to include a range of emotions, both pleasant (confident, energised, excited) and unpleasant (tense, angry, dissatisfied), each of which may help or harm a particular athlete.
Strengths | Limitations |
|---|---|
Recognises individual differences, which matches the experience of coaches. | Mostly descriptive: it says where the zone is but not why performance falls outside it. |
Practical: athletes can be taught to monitor their state and adjust it. | Recall of pre-competition anxiety after the event can be biased by the result. |
Supported by studies of elite athletes in many sports. | Still largely treats anxiety as one dimension in its original form. |
A zone is more realistic than a single optimal point. | Finding a zone needs many measured competitions, which is hard at youth or recreational level. |
IZOF is a refinement of inverted U theory rather than a replacement for it. Its main value is practical: it shifts the question from "what is the right level of arousal?" to "what is the right level of arousal for this athlete?".
Anxiety can be classified in two independent ways: by how long it lasts (state or trait) and by where it shows itself (in the mind or in the body). The four terms are used throughout research on competitive anxiety.
Charles Spielberger distinguished anxiety as a passing mood from anxiety as a lasting part of personality.
State anxiety changes from moment to moment. A tennis player’s state anxiety may be low in the warm-up, rise when serving at 5–5 in the final set and fall again after a winning point.
Trait anxiety is linked to the personality dimension of neuroticism in the Big Five. A performer high in trait anxiety tends to experience higher state anxiety in competition than a performer low in trait anxiety, especially in evaluative situations such as trials, finals or being watched by selectors. Competitive trait anxiety is specific to sport: a person can be anxious in matches but relaxed in other parts of life.
A second classification separates what anxiety does to the mind from what it does to the body. The same athlete can feel both at once, but they can also occur separately: a calm-feeling player may still have a racing heart, and a physically relaxed player may still be worrying.
Cognitive anxiety shows itself in thoughts and their effects: negative self-talk, difficulty concentrating, imagining failure and sleeping badly before an event.
The two components behave differently over time. Cognitive anxiety can rise days before an important event, as the athlete thinks about it, and stays relatively high until the event begins; it changes as expectations of success change during the competition. Somatic anxiety usually stays low until shortly before the start, rises sharply in the final hour, and then falls quickly once performance begins, as the body is busy with the activity.
Cognitive anxiety | Somatic anxiety | |
|---|---|---|
What it is | Worry, negative thoughts, fear of failure | Perceived physical symptoms of arousal |
Examples | “I’m going to miss”; “What will the coach say?”; inability to concentrate; sleeping badly the night before | Raised heart rate, sweaty hands, tense muscles, feeling sick, needing the toilet |
Typical time course | Rises days before; stays high; varies with expectations | Low until shortly before the start; peaks at the start; falls once play begins |
Reduced mainly by | Cognitive strategies: self-talk, imagery, thought stopping | Somatic strategies: relaxation techniques, breathing, warm-up |
Anxiety is closely tied to emotion. When anxiety is low, performers tend to experience positive emotions such as excitement, desire and elation; they look forward to the challenge. When anxiety is high, negative emotions such as fear, worry and despondency take over, and the same situation feels like a threat. The emotions affect behaviour: excitement tends to lead to approach (wanting the ball, taking the shot), while fear tends to lead to avoidance (hiding from play, playing safe).
Low anxiety | High anxiety |
|---|---|
Excitement: eager anticipation of competing | Fear: expectation that something bad will happen |
Desire: wanting to take part and to succeed | Worry: repeated negative thoughts about failure |
Elation: a feeling of great happiness, for example after a good start | Despondency: loss of hope and low mood, for example after early mistakes |
Research in the 1990s showed that the direction of anxiety, the way the athlete interprets it, matters as well as its intensity. In a study of 69 male rugby, basketball, football and hockey players who completed a modified anxiety questionnaire before competition, the highly competitive players reported the same intensity of anxiety as the less competitive players but interpreted it as more facilitative and less debilitative. Later work found that performers in gross, explosive sports and more experienced performers interpret their symptoms as more facilitative than performers in fine-skill sports and less experienced performers.
Sources: Jones and Swain, Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1992; Mellalieu, Hanton and O’Brien, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 2004.
The idea of direction is useful in practice. A coach who explains to a nervous athlete that a raised heart rate is a sign that the body is ready is trying to change the interpretation of the same symptoms from debilitative to facilitative, which is often easier than removing the symptoms. Confidence seems to be central: confident athletes are more likely to read their symptoms as helpful.
The theories of arousal so far treat activation as a single dimension. Multidimensional anxiety theory, proposed by Rainer Martens and colleagues in 1990, splits competitive state anxiety into components that affect performance in different ways. It was developed alongside the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2, which measures each component.
Cognitive anxiety: a negative linear relationship. As worry increases, performance decreases, because worry uses up attention and acts as an internal distractor.
Somatic anxiety: an inverted U relationship. Some physical activation helps, by preparing the body for effort, but too much (trembling, tension) interferes with coordination.
Self-confidence: a positive linear relationship. As confidence increases, performance improves.
Multidimensional anxiety theory shows that knowing how activated an athlete is (heart rate, sweating) does not predict performance on its own. Two athletes with the same physiological arousal can perform very differently if one is worried and the other is confident. The mental component, what the athlete thinks about the situation, has to be measured separately. This is the main advance of multidimensional approaches over drive theory and the inverted U.
The theory is supported by the common finding that cognitive anxiety and self-confidence are related to performance in opposite directions. A meta-analysis of 48 studies published in 2003 found that state cognitive anxiety had a small negative mean correlation with performance (r = −0.10), and that self-confidence had a larger positive correlation (r = 0.24). The effects were stronger for men and for high-standard competition.
The size of these correlations is the main problem for the theory. A correlation of −0.10 means that cognitive anxiety explains only about 1% of the variation in performance (). Some athletes perform well while worried, which the theory cannot explain, and it does not account for the direction of anxiety. It also treats each component separately, when in reality worry and physical activation interact. Catastrophe theory addresses this last point. The theory remains useful for showing coaches that confidence and worry must be managed as well as physical activation, but as a precise predictive model it is weak.
Catastrophe theory was applied to sport by Lew Hardy and John Fazey in the late 1980s. It describes how cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal interact to affect performance. When cognitive anxiety is low, physiological arousal has a gentle inverted U effect on performance. When cognitive anxiety is high, increasing physiological arousal first improves performance, but beyond a certain point performance does not decline gradually: it collapses suddenly and dramatically. This collapse is the "catastrophe".
Physiological arousal (somatic) is on the x-axis; performance is on the y-axis. Cognitive anxiety is shown by two curves: low and high.
With low cognitive anxiety (dashed curve), performance follows a mild inverted U.
With high cognitive anxiety (bold curve), performance rises more steeply and can reach a higher level, because some worry increases effort and focus.
At the threshold, any further rise in physiological arousal causes a sudden, large drop: the catastrophe. The athlete "falls off the edge".
After the catastrophe, a small reduction in arousal does not restore performance. Performance stays on the lower branch until arousal has fallen well below the point at which the drop occurred. This difference between the path up and the path down is called hysteresis.
The model was tested with eight experienced basketball players performing a set-shooting task under high and low cognitive anxiety, with physiological arousal raised and lowered by physical work. As predicted, under high cognitive anxiety the performance curves for rising and falling arousal were displaced from each other (hysteresis), while under low cognitive anxiety they overlapped. Players’ best performances were higher and their worst performances lower under high cognitive anxiety.
Sources: Hardy and Parfitt, British Journal of Psychology, 1991.
Catastrophe theory is often summarised as predicting that performance collapses when both cognitive and somatic anxiety are high. Strictly, Hardy and Fazey’s model uses physiological arousal rather than somatic anxiety on the x-axis, but the practical meaning is the same: the combination of high worry and high physical activation is the dangerous one. This is one explanation of choking, the sudden failure of a well-learned skill under pressure.
Prevent the catastrophe: reduce cognitive anxiety before competition through preparation, process goals, positive self-talk and confidence building, so that the athlete stays on the gentle curve.
After a collapse: a quick "calm down" is not enough. The athlete needs to bring physiological arousal down substantially (a break in play, slow breathing, progressive relaxation), then rebuild confidence before trying to raise intensity again.
Some cognitive anxiety helps: a little worry can improve focus and effort, so the aim is to keep it under control rather than remove it completely.
Strengths | Limitations |
|---|---|
Explains sudden collapses of performance (choking) that inverted U cannot. | Complex and hard to test: it is difficult to manipulate and measure cognitive anxiety and arousal separately in real competition. |
Shows how cognitive anxiety and arousal interact, not just how each acts alone. | Supported by a small number of laboratory studies with small samples, such as eight basketball players. |
Practical: explains why recovery after a collapse is slow and needs a large reduction in arousal (hysteresis). | Does not explain why some athletes recover quickly or perform brilliantly under high cognitive anxiety. |
Accepts that some cognitive anxiety can improve performance. | Real collapses are usually described afterwards, so arousal and anxiety at the moment of collapse are inferred rather than measured. |
Catastrophe theory is the most complete of the theories because it combines a mental and a physical dimension and explains both the benefits of some anxiety and sudden failures. Its weakness is evidence: it is hard to test in real sport, so it is best used as a framework for understanding and preventing choking, alongside measurement of both kinds of anxiety.
Theory | Shape | Dimensions | Key idea | Main weakness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Drive theory | Straight rising line | Arousal only | More arousal makes the dominant response more likely | Cannot explain decline at high arousal |
Inverted U theory | Symmetrical curve with one peak | Arousal only | Best performance at moderate, optimal arousal | Single point; gradual decline only; ignores interpretation |
IZOF | Individual band | Anxiety (later emotions) | Each athlete has a personal zone | Describes rather than explains |
Multidimensional anxiety theory | Three separate lines | Cognitive, somatic, self-confidence | Worry harms, activation helps up to a point, confidence helps | Weak correlations; ignores interaction |
Catastrophe theory | Curve with a sudden drop and hysteresis | Cognitive anxiety × physiological arousal | High worry plus high arousal can cause collapse | Hard to test in real sport |
Anxiety cannot be seen directly, so it is measured indirectly, either by asking performers how they feel (subjective measures) or by recording physical signs of arousal and behaviour (objective measures). Each approach has strengths and problems, and researchers often combine them.
The most widely used sport-specific questionnaire is the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2), developed by Martens and colleagues alongside multidimensional anxiety theory. It has 27 items, nine for each of cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety and self-confidence, rated on a four-point scale, and is completed shortly before competition. A revised 17-item version, the CSAI-2R, is now often used. Some researchers add a direction scale to each item, asking whether the symptom is felt as facilitative or debilitative.
The Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT), also developed by Martens, measures competitive trait anxiety. It has 15 items, of which ten are scored (the others are fillers to disguise the purpose), each scored 1–3, giving a total from 10 to 30; higher scores indicate a greater tendency to become anxious in competition. Other tools include the general State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and very short scales such as the Mental Readiness Form, which can be completed in seconds during an event.
Physiological measures record the effects of sympathetic activation. Heart rate and blood pressure rise with arousal and can be measured with chest-strap monitors and cuffs. Heart rate variability (HRV), the variation in time between heartbeats, falls when sympathetic activity dominates. Galvanic skin response (GSR), also called electrodermal activity, measures how easily a tiny electric current passes across the skin; sweat increases conductance, so GSR rises with arousal. Hormones such as cortisol can be measured in saliva, and muscle tension can be recorded by electromyography.
Behavioural observation is a third approach: a trained observer records signs such as fidgeting, pacing, yawning, frequent toilet visits, changes in pre-performance routines or avoiding the ball. It can be done in real competition but depends on the observer’s judgment.
Method | Strengths | Limitations |
|---|---|---|
Questionnaires (CSAI-2, CSAI-2R, SCAT, STAI) | Cheap and quick; measure cognitive anxiety and interpretation, which physiology cannot; sport-specific versions available; large samples possible | Self-report: social desirability (athletes may hide anxiety); answers depend on understanding the questions; timing matters (completed an hour before the start, not at the moment of performance); cannot be completed during most performances |
Heart rate, blood pressure, HRV | Objective and continuous; cheap wearable sensors; can be recorded during performance | Measure arousal, not anxiety: exercise, heat, caffeine and excitement also raise heart rate; individual differences in baseline |
Galvanic skin response | Sensitive to small changes in arousal; objective | Affected by temperature and exercise-related sweating; needs equipment attached to the skin; mostly laboratory use |
Cortisol (saliva or blood) | Objective marker of the stress response | Changes slowly; affected by time of day and exercise; costly analysis |
Behavioural observation | Done in real settings without interfering | Subjective interpretation by the observer; behaviours differ between people and cultures |
The most valid approach combines subjective and objective measures. Physiological measures show how aroused an athlete is, but only self-report can show whether that arousal comes with worry and how the athlete interprets it. Using both reflects the main lesson of multidimensional theories.
For performance, the theories give coaches a framework for preparation: identifying an athlete’s zone, raising or lowering arousal to suit the skill, reducing cognitive anxiety and building confidence. For health, anxiety in athletes is a welfare issue as well as a performance issue. Persistent high anxiety can contribute to dropout, poor sleep and burnout, and an ego climate that judges players only by results can make it worse. Regular physical activity is also widely used to reduce anxiety symptoms in the general population, so exercise can be part of the solution as well as a source of stress.
Sudden collapses in high-pressure matches are often described as choking. One of the best-known examples in tennis is the 1993 Wimbledon women’s singles final between Steffi Graf, the top seed and defending champion, and Jana Novotná of the Czech Republic, the eighth seed. The match is useful for analysis because its score shows the pattern that catastrophe theory predicts: a performance that was rising, then a sudden collapse that did not reverse.
Graf won a close first set on a tie-break. Novotná then won the second set 6–1 and led 4–1 in the deciding set, with a game point on her own serve to lead 5–1. She did not win another game. Reports describe her losing her nerve and double-faulting as Graf recovered, and Graf took the next five games and the title, 7–6 (8–6), 1–6, 6–4. During the presentation ceremony Novotná was in tears and was comforted by the Duchess of Kent.
Stage of the match | Score (Graf–Novotná) | Who won the games |
|---|---|---|
First set | 7–6 (tie-break 8–6) | Graf, narrowly |
Second set | 1–6 | Novotná dominant |
Third set, Novotná serving at game point for 5–1 | 1–4 | Novotná had won four of the first five games |
Rest of the third set | 6–4 | Graf won five games in a row |
Sources: Wimbledon 1993 women’s singles results; Nguyen, WTA Tennis, 2017; O’Hagan, The Independent, 1993.
Inverted U theory explains this pattern poorly. It predicts a gradual decline in performance as arousal rises beyond the optimal level, so Novotná might be expected to lose some points and games while winning others. Instead, a player who had been winning most games stopped winning any, over a short period, at the moment when the title came within reach.
Catastrophe theory fits the pattern more closely. Being within a game or two of a first Grand Slam singles title is the kind of situation in which cognitive anxiety (thoughts of winning or losing the title, the crowd, the occasion) is likely to rise sharply. Combined with high physiological arousal on court, the theory predicts that performance can be high and then fall off the edge suddenly.
Hysteresis offers a possible explanation for why she did not recover in the remaining games: the short breaks at changeovers may not have been long enough to bring arousal down far enough and rebuild confidence before the match was over. Attentional explanations of choking point the same way: an increased focus on the mechanics of serving, a skill that is usually automatic, can disrupt it.
The longer story adds a point about anxiety as a changeable state. Novotná reached the Wimbledon final again in 1997, losing to Martina Hingis, and in 1998 she won the title, beating Nathalie Tauziat in the final. At 29 years and nine months, she became the oldest first-time Grand Slam singles champion of the Open Era at that time. A catastrophe in one match did not reflect a fixed inability to perform under pressure.
Sources: Collins, The Bud Collins History of Tennis, 2010; Finn, The New York Times, 1998.
Analysis questions
Sketch the catastrophe theory graph and mark where Novotná might have been at 4–1 and at 4–3 in the final set.
Explain why inverted U theory gives a weaker explanation of the final set than catastrophe theory.
Suggest two strategies a coach could teach a player to use at changeovers after a run of lost games, and link each to hysteresis.
Multiple-choice questions often test whether students can tell the theories and the types of anxiety apart.
A second type asks which statement about a theory is correct.
Classification questions use short descriptions.
Paper 1B style. Ten national-level swimmers completed the CSAI-2 (cognitive and somatic subscales, each scored from 9 to 36) and had their resting heart rate measured at five times before a national championship final. The results are hypothetical.
Time before the final | Cognitive anxiety, mean (SD) | Somatic anxiety, mean (SD) | Resting heart rate (beats min⁻¹), mean |
|---|---|---|---|
7 days | 18 (4) | 13 (3) | 62 |
2 days | 22 (4) | 14 (3) | 63 |
1 day | 24 (5) | 16 (4) | 66 |
2 hours | 25 (5) | 21 (4) | 74 |
30 minutes | 26 (5) | 27 (4) | 88 |
Sketch questions are marked on shape and labels.
Arousal is the level of physiological and psychological activation, from deep sleep to intense excitement; its physical signs come from the sympathetic nervous system.
Stress is the process of responding to a demand, arousal is activation, and anxiety is a negative emotional state of worry and apprehension.
State anxiety is temporary and situation-specific; trait anxiety is a stable tendency. Cognitive anxiety is worry; somatic anxiety is the perception of bodily symptoms.
Drive theory predicts a straight-line rise in performance with arousal through the dominant response, which helps experts and harms beginners.
Inverted U theory predicts best performance at a moderate, optimal arousal that is lower for fine and complex skills and beginners, and higher for gross, simple skills and experts.
IZOF proposes that each athlete performs best within a personal zone of anxiety, which may be low, moderate or high.
Low anxiety brings positive emotions (excitement, desire, elation) and high anxiety negative emotions (fear, worry, despondency); anxiety can be interpreted as facilitative or debilitative.
Multidimensional anxiety theory: cognitive anxiety harms performance linearly, somatic anxiety follows an inverted U, self-confidence helps; activation alone cannot predict performance.
Catastrophe theory: with high cognitive anxiety, rising arousal leads to a sudden collapse, and recovery needs a large fall in arousal (hysteresis).
Anxiety is measured subjectively (CSAI-2, SCAT) and objectively (heart rate, HRV, blood pressure, GSR, cortisol, observation); combining both is most valid.
I can define arousal and list its physiological and psychological signs.
I can distinguish stress, arousal and anxiety, state and trait anxiety, and cognitive and somatic anxiety.
I can sketch drive theory and explain the dominant response.
I can sketch the inverted U and explain how optimal arousal varies with skill, experience and personality.
I can explain IZOF and draw zones for different athletes.
I can describe the emotions of low and high anxiety and explain facilitative and debilitative anxiety.
I can sketch and explain multidimensional anxiety theory and catastrophe theory, including hysteresis.
I can evaluate subjective and objective measures of anxiety.
I can apply the theories to a real performance, such as a choking case.