Qualitative experiences of self-focus, distraction, and interactionist anxiety-performance mechanisms: What do players perceive?

Rich, Shannon and Zhang, Shuge and Jiang, Kaixiao and Wakefield, Caroline and Owen, Robin (2025) Qualitative experiences of self-focus, distraction, and interactionist anxiety-performance mechanisms: What do players perceive? Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 47 (6). pp. 390-400. ISSN 0895-2779

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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 semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis revealed three superordinate themes (Distraction, Self-Focus, and Interaction), two middle themes (Sources and Failure Mechanisms), and a total of ten 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 bi-directional relationship, whereby self-focus can be distracting and distraction can induce self-focus. This novel finding offers progress towards integrated rather than mutually exclusive conceptualisations of anxiety-performance mechanisms.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information and Comments:	© 2025 The Authors. Published by Human Kinetics, Inc. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, which permits the copy and redistribution in any medium or format, provided it is not used for commercial purposes, no modifications are made, appropriate credit is given, and a link to the license is provided
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Health and Sport Sciences
Depositing User:	Robin Owen
Date Deposited:	24 Oct 2025 11:15
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2025 09:21
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4778

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