Is anxiety really facilitative? reaction to the myth that cognitive anxiety always impairs sport performance

Abstract

We feel honored to be selected to react to the competitive anxiety portion of Lew Hardy’s Coleman Grif6th Address from the 19% AAASP Conference. Not only have we long considered Lew one of the brightest and most prolific scholars in our field, but he is also an independent and creative thinker who has pioneered several new approaches to the conceptualization and measurement of anxiety. In reacting to Hardy’s first myth that cognitive anxiety is always detrimental to sport performance, we must first acknowledge that we have many more areas of agreement than disagreement with his major points about competitive anxiety. First, we agree that many ideas about competitive anxiety are outdated and need to be overhauled. particularly how the construct is defined and measured. Second, we acknowledge that as currently measured (e.g., CSAI-2, Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump & Smith, 1990). competitive anxiety can be both facilitative and debilitative to performance. Third, we concur that anxiety researchers should spend less time looking at the individual effects of multidimensional anxiety components and spend more time investigating the interaction between cognitive and somatic anxiety and their joint impact on performance. Finally, we are in general agreement with Hardy’s implications for practitioners, even though we recommend modifying these suggestions somewhat to be consistent with the definitional and psychometric points that this reaction addresses. Nevertheless, the focus of our reaction is centered around two major areas where we disagree with Hardy, specifically: (a) how he defines competitive anxiety