In the present article, we analyzed the role of self-control strength and state anxiety in sports performance. We tested the hypothesis that self-control strength and state anxiety interact in predicting sports performance on the basis of two studies, each using a different sports task (Study 1: performance in a basketball free throw task, N = 64; Study 2: performance in a dart task, N = 79). The patterns of results were as expected in both studies: Participants with depleted self-control strength performed worse in the specific tasks as their anxiety increased, whereas there was no significant relation for participants with fully available self-control strength. Furthermore, different degrees of available self-control strength did not predict performance in participants who were low in state anxiety, but did in participants who were high in state anxiety. Thus increasing self-control strength could reduce the negative anxiety effects in sports and improve athletes' performance under pressure.

In the present work, we examine the role of self-control resources within the relationship between anxiety and cognitive test performance. We argue that self-control is required for keeping attention away from anxiety-related worries, which would otherwise distract a person from performing on the test. In Study 1 (N = 67) and Study 2 (N = 96), we found that state anxiety was negatively related to performance of verbal learning and mental arithmetic if participants' self-control resources were depleted, but it was unrelated if participants' self-control was intact. In Study 3 (N = 99), the worry component of trait test anxiety was more strongly related to perceived distraction by worries while performing an arithmetic task for participants with depleted self-control resources than for nondepleted participants. Furthermore, distraction by worries showed to be responsible for suboptimal performance. The findings may help to clarify the anxiety-performance relationship and offer a novel approach for counteracting performance decrements associated with test anxiety.

Zusammenfassung. Selbstkontrolle ist definiert als die Überwindung oder Modifikation von Reaktionstendenzen. Die dispositionelle Selbstkontroll-Kapazität hängt positiv gerichtet mit einer Vielzahl von Maßen adaptiven Verhaltens zusammen. Zur ökonomischen Messung dispositioneller Selbstkontroll-Kapazität wurde in der vorliegenden Arbeit die vornehmlich eingesetzte Kurzform der Self-Control Scale von Tangney, Baumeister und Boone (2004) ins Deutsche adaptiert. Dazu wurde die übersetzte Gesamtskala bestehend aus 36 Items Studierenden (N = 316, Studie 1) und Schülern (N = 335, Studie 2) vorgelegt. Die in der Gesamtskala enthaltene Kurzskala aus 13 Items erwies sich in beiden Studien als eindimensional, reliabel und valide bezüglich erwarteter Zusammenhänge mit Kriteriumsvariablen. Der Vergleich zwischen Kurz- und Gesamtskala zeigte, dass die Kosten der ökonomischeren Messung hinsichtlich Reliabilität und Validität gering sind.

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