The Role of Repression in the Incidence of Ironic Errors

The role of repression in the incidence of ironic errors was investigated on a golf task. Coping styles of novice golfers were determined using measures of cogni-tive anxiety and physiological arousal. Following baseline putts, participants (n = 58) performed a competition putt with the opportunity to win UK£50 (approx. US$100). Before completing the competition putt participants were instructed to “land the ball on the target, but be particularly careful not to over-shoot the target. ” The distance the ball traveled past the hole formed the measure of ironic effects. Probing of the coping style × condition interaction, F(2, 41) = 6.53, p <.005, revealed that only the repressors incurred a significant increase in ironic error for the competition putt. This suggests that the act of repressing anxiety has a detrimental performance effect. When attempting to describe or explain the anxiety-performance relationship in sport, researchers typically refer to the conscious processing hypothesis (Masters, 1992), processing efficiency theory (Eysenck & Calvo, 1992), and cusp catastrophe models (Hardy, 1996), and these theoretical positions continue to attract researc