Relationship Between Pre-Competition Anxiety and Self-Efficacy Among Female Athletes of LCWU

Abstract

Introduction Since the inception of “self-efficacy” theory in 1977 by Bandura, this subject has been extensively incorporated in subsequent researches for the sake of improvement in defining the pertinent parameters, understanding the underlying principles and imparting practicability of the subject. The challenges of ever-growing realm of sports sciences and the remarkable potential of the subject regarding the way it can control one’s behavior to acquire any level of desired performance; presented the researchers with a motivation to dig deeper into the core concepts of self-efficacy and unveil the mysteries unknown to the disciples and the masters alike in field of sports sciences. The definition as introduced by Bandura is, “Self-efficacy of a person is one’s own assessment of their capacity to orchestrate and traverse the course of actions that is required to obtain the designated type of performance”. Alternatively, self-efficacy can be stated to be one’s belief in one’s ability to adapt to the behavior that is crucially required in the quest to bring forth the desired performance achievement. It is the confidence in one’s ability to achieve mastery of one’s own behavior and obtaining command for channelizing one’s cognitive processes for their own benefit. This sort of perceptual self-assessment influences all types of humanitarian experiences including the ambitions that the individuals strive for, the magnitude of vigor and vitality that they utilize in an effort to achieve those ambitions, and the probability of attaining a particular level of behavioral performances. Sports contest may, at times stimulate strong psychological pressure even for experienced athletes, thereby making them vulnerable to its detrimental effects. Such stressful situations surreptitiously imbue a sense of low self-confidence creating an impression that one has no control over the situation that is either happening or is about to happen. This cognitive behavior is classified as “anxiety”. The demanding nature of professional sports and the surrounding stressful competitive environment makes the performance even more challenging and sometimes this pressure may amount to anxiety or more typically competitive anxiety (Balague, 2005). General anxiety can be defined as a negative emotional state portrayed by factors such as tension, fear and nervousness and it is primarily linked to the trigger of disturbing reaction within the body. Technically, the term “competitive anxiety” as presented by Martens and Bump in 1998, is described as the propensity to evaluate the extremely daunting circumstances to be treacherous and subsequently react as a result, with the feelings of fear, stress, and discomfort. Immediately before the competition performance, competitive anxiety intensifies rapidly and it also withers away rapidly after the performance is over. This transient sensation which is generally invoked during the twenty-four hours prior to the competition and lives up to the competition is referred to as “Pre-competition anxiety.” Methods The research was conducted using a cross sectional research design. The sample consisted of 65 female athletes from 5 different departments of Lahore College Women University (LCWU) as mentioned 1) Department of Physical Education 2) Department of Education 3) Department of Punjabi Language 4) Department of Mass Communication 5) Department of Business Administration. The age range of these athletes were 21-26 years and they had been members of sports teams for 2-3 years. The data were obtained during intercollegiate sports tournaments, which are organized in every year by LCWU. A twenty-one-item scale “State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety” (STICSA) developed by Melissa J. Ree, Colin Macleod (2008) was used, Self-Rating Scale of Athletic Performance developed by Wolanin (2004) was also used. Data were analyzed using SPSS 23.0. Correlation Coefficient and Regression Analysis was performed to determine the relationship at the 0.05 level. Results Results indicated that personal factors had no significant relationship between somatic and cognitive anxiety. So the first conclusion was made to explain that personal factors didn’t affect self-efficacy of female athletes. The second conclusion was that both somatic and cognitive anxiety was negatively correlated with sports performance at the 0.05 level. So, it may be concluded that somatic and cognitive anxiety had an inverse relationship with sports performance, which means pre-competition anxiety didn’t affect the self-efficacy of female athletes. Discussion Many pieces of research indicated that athletes do experience anxiety before the initiation of a competition. Usually, they experience an increased level of anxiety because they become conscious of their performance in sports when they see a great number of people in front of them (Gould, 2011). The more audience appears in the competition area, the more intense cognitive anxiety will be experienced by them. As the cognitive anxiety increases the probability of making errors also increases thus affecting the performance in sports. According to Pritchard, (2005), the presence of the audience during the sports competition increases the somatic anxiety also. Somatic anxiety refers to physiological changes, such as increased heartbeat, sweating difficulty in breathing, increased urination, butterflies in the stomach, and dryness of the mouth and muscle tension. Athletes, who have mastered anxiety management skills, will often respond to anxiety in a positive way by managing their thoughts as compared to those athletes, who are not trained in anxiety management. The results of the present study revealed a negative correlation between cognitive anxiety and self-efficacy. A similar result also detected between somatic anxiety and sports performance. The basic premise of multidimensional conceptualizations of anxiety is that the two components of anxiety are independent because they have different causal factors and the consequences are also different, (Martens et al., 1990). If an athlete is worried about competition, she will experience cognitive anxiety but it might not affect her performance in sports. This is similar to the inverted-U theory (Ampofo-Boateng, 2009). When an increase in somatic anxiety is recorded in an athlete, it can result in arousal at an optimal level that results in the best performance in sports.