Optimism, Pessimism, and Precompetition Anxiety in College Athletes

This study examined the effect of optimistic and pessimistic cognitive styles on performance and precompetition anxiety. Collegiate athletes (female=39; male=35) completed the Defensive Pessimism Questionnaire and were grouped as optimists, defensive pessimists or real pessimists. Defensive pessimism is a strategy through which individuals set low expectations so as to protect themselves from potential failure, but has no adverse effect on performance. Such a strategy differs from the real pessimist approach, which results in both low performance expectations and achievements. Predicted precompetition anxiety was assessed via the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-Yl). Results revealed that females exhibited significantly (P<0.05) higher levels of predicted precompetition anxiety than males. However, when anxiety responses were re-analyzed by cognitive orientation, it was found that regardless of gender, optimists exhibited significantly lower (P<0.01) levels of precompetition anxiety compared to the pessimists groups. While a majority of the sample (59.9%) possessed a pessimistic style, these findings suggest that performance differences between the groups were not significant. Hence, findings from this study indicate that cognitive orientation style and not gender is the best predictor of precompetition anxiety.