title: Anxiety, ego depletion, and sports performance.
abstract: In the present article, we analyzed the role of self-control strength and state anxiety in sports performance. We tested the hypothesis that self-control strength and state anxiety interact in predicting sports performance on the basis of two studies, each using a different sports task (Study 1: performance in a basketball free throw task, N = 64; Study 2: performance in a dart task, N = 79). The patterns of results were as expected in both studies: Participants with depleted self-control strength performed worse in the specific tasks as their anxiety increased, whereas there was no significant relation for participants with fully available self-control strength. Furthermore, different degrees of available self-control strength did not predict performance in participants who were low in state anxiety, but did in participants who were high in state anxiety. Thus increasing self-control strength could reduce the negative anxiety effects in sports and improve athletes' performance under pressure.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology, University of Mannheim, Germany.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Englert
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bertrams
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D056352:Athletes / Q000523:psychology; D054874:Athletic Performance / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001490:Basketball; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D020377:Self Efficacy; D055815:Young Adult