Nearly five decades ago, research studies showing that ―global trait anxiety —one’s ‖
general tendency to experience anxiety—is of limited value in predicting an individual’s
behavior (e.g., Hodges & Spielberger, 1966; Mellstrom, Cicala, & Zuckerman, 1976) has
spurred researchers’ interest in situation-specific types of trait anxiety, including
competitive trait anxiety (CTA)—―an individual’s tendency to perceive competitive
situations as threatening and to respond to these situations with A-state [i.e., state anxiety]‖
(Martens, Vealey, & Burton, 1990, p.11). Though early research studies measured CTA as
a unitary construct (e.g., Martens, 1977), there is now ample evidence that CTA is
multidimensional (e.g., Martens, Burton, Vealey, Bump, & Smith, 1990; Morris, Harris, &
Rovins, 1981). This conceptualization is reflected in a widely used measure of CTA, the
Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS; Smith, Smoll, & Schutz, 1990), whose subscales tap three CTA
dimensions: worry, concentration disruption, and somatic anxiety. CTA, when perceived as
debilitative by a competitor, has been linked to a number of negative outcomes, such as
burnout (Wiggins, Lai, & Deiters, 2005) and lower levels of athletic skill (Jones & Swain,
1995; Perry & Williams, 1998) and hardiness (Hanton, Evans, & Neil, 2003).
Importantly, because a competitive situation may occur not only when an individual
attempts to surpass others’ performance, but also when he or she tries to reach or exceed
―an idealized performance level, or the individual’s own past performance (Martens, ‖
Vealey, & Burton, 1990, pp. 15-16), CTA occurs in both sport and non-sport settings
(Barrell & Terry, 2003; Miller & Chesky, 2004). One of these domains is the U.S. military,
which requires service members to be regularly tested on their ability to reach or exceed an
idealized performance level on physically challenging tasks (e.g., the Army Physical
Fitness Test).