Repression of Anxiety and its Effects on Psychophysiological Responses to Stimuli in Competitive Gymnasts
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This study investigated cardiac and electrodermal responses in competitive gymnasts differing in levels of trait anxiety and repression. The research strategy was to seek differences in tonic and phasic physiological measures that occurred in association with differences in state and/or trait anxiety levels, and then to investigate whether similar differences were associated with differences in levels of repression. Two task conditions were employed: A resting baseline session was counterbalanced with an imagery session in which subjects were requested to image their current team routine in real time. For half of each session, subjects were instructed to either count (relevant) stimuli or ignore (irrelevant) stimuli. The results established a number of psychophysiological differences between groups differing on state and trait anxiety. Similar differences as a result of repression were not obtained, raising questions about the validity of the construct of “repression” in this context. There were some small effects, however, suggesting that repression may affect components of attentional processing in different situations.
The authors were with the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Australia, at the time of this study. Patsy Tremayne is now with the School of Education and Language Studies at the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur, PO Box 555, Campbelltown, NSW 2560 Australia.
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