Hope's relationship with athletic performance anxiety: The effects of controllability, threat perception, and negative evaluation concerns

Hope theory states that hope is made up of goals, the pathways that will lead to them, and the agency that will propel one toward them (Snyder, 1991). Research has shown that state and trait hope are associated with decreased general anxiety and improved athletic performance. To date, however, no study has examined hope's relationship to performance anxiety among athletes. This study hypothesized that hope is inversely related to athletic performance anxiety because of its role as a protective factor against perceptions of threat cues, fear of negative evaluation by others, and feelings of uncontrollability. 80 undergraduate Division I-AA athletes completed measures of state and trait hope, fear of negative evaluation, threat perception, locus of causation, state and trait competitive sport anxiety, state anxiety, and self-efficacy. Path analysis was used to evaluate the consistency of a causal relationship between hope and performance anxiety through the aforementioned three variables. The model of trait hope leading to a reduction in trait performance anxiety through a reduction in fear of negative evaluation, a lessening of vulnerability to perceptions of stress, and a strengthening of a stable locus of causation, was supported. Similar results were found for state hope and state performance anxiety, though only the self-confidence subscale of state competitive anxiety was shown to be a significant aspect of the model. These results suggest that interventions to instill or increase trait hope might be effective in decreasing athletic performance anxiety.