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Peyton Strunk

Professor Orozco

ENC 1102

15 April, 2024

Literature Review

When looking into sports psychology, studies done on counter-intentional errors (errors

that occur when you try not to make that specific mistake) and its correlation to sports anxiety in

athletes have caught the attention of many authors. Each author that I’ve looked at offers a

unique perspective on the topic, sharing both similar and contrasting views with other

researchers. According to Recep Gorgulu’s article “Counter-Intentional Errors of Basketball Free

Throw Shooting Under Elevated Pressure: An Educational Approach of Task Instruction,”

Gorgulu uses Wegner’s Theory of Ironic Processes of Mental Control (1994) to claim that the

performance athlete’s would decrease when given a specific set of instructions meant to raise

anxiety. After looking at all of the prior research done, I wanted to analyze how the other authors

added to the conversation of sports anxiety, as well as where they shared similar or contrasting

views regarding the different causes and effects of it on athletes.

One of our sources focuses on penalty kicks in soccer to look at how counter-intentional

errors can occur. Bakker writes that the players in the study were instructed to shoot outside of

the reach of the keeper, which ended up decreasing the accuracy of the kicker. In the primary

source, Gorgulu discusses how anxiety is formed from the presence of a threat. Bakker is able to

expand upon the discussion by confirming the relationship between negatively created
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instructions and its result in more unsuccessful shots. Tying into Bakker’s testing, Gorgulu found

that when the basketball players in his study were instructed to avoid the rim, they also

encountered more errors explained by Wegner’s theory.

Another source supporting Gorgulu’s research was Baumeister’s “Choking Under

Pressure: Self-consciousness and Paradoxical Effects of Incentives on Skillful Performance.” In

this article, Baumeister discusses how one may become overwhelmed by the pressure they put on

themselves to succeed in a task. He says that this leads to a shift in attention from completing the

task to being stressed in general. Because stress can interrupt muscle memory, a player’s

performance would likely be negatively impacted from this. Baumeister continues the discussion

by documenting experiments done which evaluated how one's increased attention to their

performance resulted in performance decay. He found that individuals who focused too much on

their self-consciousness and constantly were overthinking usually performed worse than the ones

who didn’t. Connecting this back to Gorgulu’s writing, Gorgulu claims that anxiety is closely

related to self-esteem and if one is low, so is the other. Gorgulu’s support in Masters’ (1992)

conscious processing hypothesis also agrees with Baumeister's results, therefore supplementing

his claim that players who focus too heavily on succeeding will experience sports anxiety.

Some sources don’t believe that an increase in anxiety guarantees that performance will

fall. According to Jenkins in “How Anxiety Affects Sports Performance,” the “Inverted U

Theory” indicates that there is an optimal level of anxiety to maximize performance. This theory

uses the logic that stressors help humans overcome tasks, so a small amount of anxiety will be

beneficial in the long run. Jenkins continues by saying that too much anxiety will cause the

player to fail frequently, while too little anxiety will leave the player too comfortable, therefore

not improving or playing to the best of their ability. This viewpoint is not shared by Gorgulu, as
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in the primary source the focus is on how anxiety directly causes a decrease in performance, with

no mention of an optimal amount of it.

In order to further the discussion on counter-intentional errors, Woodman uses hockey

penalty shots to conduct an experiment testing Wegner's theory. Similarly to the basketball study,

some players were instructed to not miss in a specific direction while others had no specific

directions. Testing proved that when given these instructions, the amount of ironic errors (errors

made because of the instructions) increased, while non-ironic errors (errors that weren’t affected

by additional instructions) had relatively no change. This was a useful addition to the discussion

since it indicates that Wegner’s theory is correct when looked at in a sports setting, thus

supporting Gorgulu’s testing and theories in the primary source.

Now looking at our popular sources, one author from “Eliminate Fear at the Free-Throw

Line. NBC Camps” writes that elevated fear and anxiety levels reduces sensitivity and restricts

muscle movement, which can inhibit performance. The author claims that a player can combat

this by pressuring themselves with a consequence for failing. This goes against what Gorgulu

writes in the primary source, since he drives the point that increasing pressure tends to result in

frequent failures. However, Swaim agrees with Gorgulu and adds that according to the

Yerkes-Dodson law, if a task feels too stressful, you will panic or freeze up and fail more often.

This aligns with Gorgulu’s statement that additional stressors actually cause more ironic errors.

Following the research on counter-intentional errors and its connection to sports anxiety

amongst athletes, I gained an understanding of how complex the topic is as well as how many

layers there are to it. The various sources examined in this analysis have provided many different

viewpoints from the authors, some agreeing with the primary source, while others claim that

there is an ideal amount of anxiety for players to face, or even that they should pressure
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themselves into succeeding. Through their research, I found many shared ideas and theories, as

well as some points of interest that were disagreed upon. Overall, all of the information given

helped to enrich the conversation by sharing valuable insights regarding the causes and effects of

sports anxiety on athletes, as well as various theories and laws mentioned that explain their

findings. By using this research, players and coaches can more confidently avoid sports anxiety

by being aware of the potential causes and taking precautions against it.
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References:

Bakker, F. C., Oudejans, R. R. D., Binsch, O., & Van der Kamp, J. (2006). Penalty

shooting and gaze behavior: Unwanted effects of the wish not to miss.

International Journal of Sports Psychology, 37, 265–280.

Baumeister, R. F. (1984). Choking under pressure: Self-consciousness and the

paradoxical effects of incentives on skilled performance. Journal of Personality &

Social Psychology, 46(3), 610–620. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.46.3.610

“Eliminate Fear at the Free-Throw Line.” NBC Camps,

www.nbccamps.com/blog/basketball/eliminate-fear-free-throw-line. Accessed 2

Feb. 2024. Jenkins, Rhiannon.

Gorgulu, Recep. “Counter-intentional errors of basketball free throw shooting under

elevated pressure: An educational approach of Task Instruction.” Journal of Education and

Learning, vol. 8, no. 2, 25 Feb. 2019, p. 89, https://doi.org/10.5539/jel.v8n2p89.

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“How Anxiety Affects Sports Performance.” Jenkins Soft Tissue Therapy, 28 June 2021,

jenkinstherapy.com/blog/how-anxiety-affects-sports-performance/#:~:text=%F0%

9F%94%BA%20it%20can%20be%20extremely,when%20in%20a%20sporting%

20environment.

Swaim, Emily. “Why Sports Anxiety Happens and How to Cope.” Healthline, Healthline

Media, 9 Mar. 2022, www.healthline.com/health/sports-performance-anxiety.

Woodman, T., Barlow, M., & Gorgulu, R. (2015). Don’t miss, don’t miss, d’oh!

Performance when anxious suffers specifically where least desired. The Sport

Psychologist, 29(3), 213–223. https://doi.org/10.1123/tsp.2014-0114