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Peyton Strunk

Professor Orozco

ENC 1102

15 March, 2024

How Authors Discuss Sports Anxiety and Its Correlation to Counter-Intentional Errors

Introduction

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

that give the opposite outcome of what was desired, typically due to increased stress towards

succeeding in that task) and its correlation to sports anxiety in athletes have caught the attention

of many authors, including Baumeister, Bakker, Oudejans, Binsch, Van der Kamp, Swaim,

Woodman, and Barlow. 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 of 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.

To prepare for my analysis, I chose various articles that were significant to my research

on how authors added to the discussion of sports anxiety, and how it's related to
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counter-intentional errors. The texts that I used all provided insight to what sports anxiety is, how

it affects athletes, and how it can lead to counter-intentional errors. The reason for my research is

so coaches and athletes can grasp a better understanding of sports anxiety, and become more

aware on how to reduce the likelihood of counter-intentional errors. By keeping my focus on

Gorgulu’s journal and the secondary peer reviewed academic sources he used, I began my

analysis.

Background and Significance

The research problem is looking at whether or not sports anxiety has an effect on the

amount of counter-intentional errors a player makes. Whether it's because it's a championship

game, or because of additional negatively formatted instructions given by coaches, sports anxiety

in players tends to increase. Studies that I have read indicate that whenever players were given

additional pressure, they tended to have an increased amount of counter-intentional errors,

however, after looking at all the different research methods used, it came across to me that when

testing for ironic errors, groups were given different sets of ironic instructions, and studies were

done in different environments.

The overall goal of this study is to gather all of the information I can find regarding

specifically sports anxiety’s correlation to counter-intentional errors. To conduct my research, I

gathered both peer reviewed academic sources, as well as popular sources, and put them all into

conversation with one another in order to look at the language and rhetoric the authors use to

discuss the topic. By doing this, we can see both areas of agreement and disagreement to find the

most accurate information regarding the impact of sports anxiety on athletes. The reason why

this study is worth doing is to broaden society’s understanding of sports anxiety in order to
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maximize the potential of athletes. It will also serve as a guide to help adjust training regimes to

avoid the possibility of counter-intentional errors occurring in the players routines.

Literature Review

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 (Bakker 268). 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 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 (Gorgulu 89).

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)
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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

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
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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.

Research Design and Methods

In total, I used seven texts for my analysis. The primary subject that I looked for when

choosing my articles is that they provided some sort of insight to what sports anxiety is.

Additionally, some of the texts defined counter-intentional errors, and conducted a study on how

they occur and what they can be attributed to. I used five peer reviewed academic sources, as

well as two popular sources. The first peer reviewed academic source was “Counter-Intentional

Errors of Basketball Free Throw Shooting Under Elevated Pressure: An Educational Approach

of Task Instruction,” by Recep Gorgulu, which was used in order to gather all of my secondary

sources. I used this as my approach to ensure that the research was similar and was narrowed

down to focus on the same subject.

When choosing my texts, I also used an approach of making sure there was correlating as

well as conflicting information, where some ideas were supported, meanwhile others were not. I

did this because I wanted to put the sources into conversation with each other without bias in

order to effectively gather all the information regarding my topic as well as I could.

Additionally, I made a rhetorical move chart of my primary source to use as a template

for my secondary peer reviewed academic sources to ensure that they align with my criteria and

add to the conversation.

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Preliminary Suppositions and Implications

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

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.

As previously mentioned, in order to narrow down my selection for peer reviewed

academic sources, I created a rhetorical move chart to use as the template for finding areas of the

text to focus on when looking for all of the similarities and differences between sources.

(1) Title of the article, introduces what the research is about

“Counter-Intentional Errors of Basketball Free Throw Shooting Under Elevated Pressure: An

Educational Approach of Task Instruction- Title of the article, introduces what the research is

about.” (Gorgulu, 89)

(2) Abstract, provides the research question and the author’s prediction

The aim of this experimental study was to test Wegner’s (1994) theory of ironic processes in a

basketball free throw task under pressure. More specifically, Wegner (1994) predicts that when

instructed not to perform in a certain manner performers’ performance will break down where it

is least desired, which is the main hypothesis of the current study. (Gorgulu, 89)
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(3) Introduction

The author introduces anxiety, then sources models and theories whose goals were to show the

relationship between anxiety and performance in sports

(4) Method

The author discusses how the participants will be analyzed to measure their performance

(5) Procedure

The author goes over what the experiment consisted of

(6) Results

The author discusses the results of the experiment and whether or not it could be determined that

anxiety had an effect on performance

Example Move Obligatory, Common,

Optional, or Rare

1 Title Obligatory

2 Overview of article Common

3 Introduction to article Obligatory

4 Explanation of how Common

participants will be analyzed

5 What the experiment Rare

consisted of

6 The results of the experiment Common

Specifically, the peer reviewed sources focused on the studies performed which analyzed

counter-intentional errors. Those sources talked about the specific factors of stress and anxiety

that were causing athletes to perform ironic errors. They also used various theories to support

their hypotheses such as “Wegner’s theory,” the “Inverted U Theory,” and “Master’s Conscious
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Processing Hypothesis, all mentioned earlier. Other key factors which focused on the study itself

are mentioned in the peer reviewed articles as well. Baumeister chooses to introduce the idea that

stress can interrupt muscle memory, which would presumably inhibit a player's athletic

performance. Baumeister continues by using other experiments previously conducted, which

evaluated how one's increased attention to their performance will result in performance decay.

This information makes it clear that overthinking will negatively affect sports performance,

which is supported by Master’s Theory. Additionally, it was proven in Woodman’s study that

negatively created instructions (Ex. Instructing players to not miss in a specific direction) did in

fact lead to an increase in counter-intentional errors.

On the other hand, the popular sources were primarily used to discuss what sports anxiety

is, as well as provide remedies to avoid it. In one of the sources, it was noted that elevated fear

and anxiety levels reduces sensitivity and restricts muscle movement. This is supported with

Baumesiter’s claim from earlier saying that muscle memory can be interrupted, thus providing

more clarity for people looking into this research that it is worthwhile to take measures to avoid

sports anxiety. My second popular source claims that a player can combat sports anxiety 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.

By looking at all the other sources as well, we can see there is far more support in favor

of Gorgulu involving this particular tip, so it can be inferred that it would be better to not

pressure yourself with a consequence. Without analyzing all the sources together, readers would

previously be unsure or led the wrong way with this particular information, so by using this
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research, players and coaches can more confidently avoid sports anxiety by being aware of the

potential causes and taking precautions against it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, studying how each article added to the discussion regarding athletes'

struggles with sports anxiety, how sports anxiety creates a trend of counter-intentional errors, as

well as potential solutions for anxiety allowed me to gather lots of valuable information that can

be looked at by the general public, coaches, and players in order to improve performance. Many

different authors/researchers, like Baumeister, Bakker, Oudejans, and others, have shared their

thoughts on this topic. Recep Gorgulu's research, for example, showed that giving athletes

certain instructions can actually make them more anxious and perform worse. Looking at all

these different viewpoints helped me understand that there are many factors involved in how

anxiety affects athletes. By learning more about this, coaches and athletes can work together to

find ways to handle anxiety better and reduce mistakes during games. Continuing to study and

talk about this topic will help us improve how we deal with anxiety in sports and perform our

best when it matters most.

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Works Cited:

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.

“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