Qualitative Experiences of Self-Focus, Distraction, and Interactionist Anxiety-Performance Mechanisms: What Do Players Perceive?
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The negative effect of anxiety on performance has been explained via distraction (e.g., attentional control theory), self-focus (e.g., reinvestment theory), or an interaction of these mechanisms (e.g., interactionist hypothesis). For the first time, athletes' qualitative perception of all three mechanisms was explored. Ten amateur netball players completed an individual semistructured interview. Thematic analysis revealed three superordinate themes (distraction, self-focus, and interaction), two middle themes (sources and failure mechanisms), and a total of 10 subthemes (internal distractions, external distractions, impaired attentional control, overloaded attention, conscious motor processing, movement self-consciousness, deautomatization, distraction-induced self-focus, self-focus-induced distraction, and overload from simultaneous self-focus and distraction). Results suggest athletes notice instances of self-focus, distraction, and interactionist mechanisms. Interestingly, distraction and self-focus appeared to manifest a bidirectional relationship, whereby self-focus can be distracting and distraction can induce self-focus. This novel finding offers progress toward integrated rather than mutually exclusive conceptualizations of anxiety-performance mechanisms.
Authors: Shannon Rich, Shuge Zhang, Kaixiao Jiang, Caroline Wakefield, Robin Owen
Institutions: Liverpool Hope University, Hunan University of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4415552934