Self-compassion, repetitive negative thinking, and performance anxiety in athletes and musicians: A cross-domain study

Competitive athletes use psychological strategies to cope with anxiety and other adverse emotions, which arise during the sport season. Self-compassion is one of those psychological strategies. It refers to a kind, accepting attitude towards oneself, especially in moments of failure or stress (Neff, 2003). In sports psychology, it is considered a protective factor that supports adaptive emotion regulation and performance stability. Sports-related studies show that athletes with higher self-compassion respond more constructively to setbacks, are less self-critical, and experience less performance-related anxiety (Mosewich et al., 2011; Ferguson et al., 2014). At the same time, junior and recreational athletes tend to have higher levels of self-compassion, suggesting that increasing pressure to perform tends to reduce self-compassion (Ferguson et al., 2015). In one study the relationship between rumination, worry, self-compassion and performance anxiety was investigated. The results showed a high negative correlation between the self-compassion positive scale and rumination, worry and the competition anxiety somatic, and a high positive correlation between the self-compassion negative scale and rumination, worry, and the somatic and concern aspect of anxiety. Furthermore, the results showed that for both rumination and worry, women had higher values than men and individual athletes had higher values than athletes from team sport. Women had higher values in the negative scale of self-compassion compared to men, and individual athletes and handball players had lower values than soccer players. Furthermore, it was shown that in athletes the relation between the negative scale of self-compassion and the somatic and concern aspect of competition anxiety was mediated by worry (Jansen et al., 2021). Many mechanisms are similar to those in professional music-making: high pressure to perform, fear of mistakes, and public evaluation. Thus, similar to sports, self-compassion has a performance-stabilizing effect and protects against excessive self-criticism, and therefore also plays an important role in music. A study by Kelley and Farley (2019) found that although there were no differences in overall self-compassion between music and non-music students, the subfacet of overidentification correlated with performance anxiety. Building on this, further findings by Farley and Kelley (2023) showed that, including music students, the subfacet of self-kindness is associated with lower performance anxiety. The main questions of the study are a) if the relationship between rumination, worry, self-compassion and performance anxiety can be seen in experienced musicians, too, b) if there is a difference in the psychological variables in experience athletes and musicians compared to non-experienced ones and if the variables are related to the performance level and years of practice and c) if rumination and worry mediate between self-compassion and anxiety. The following hypotheses will be investigated: 1) According to the study of Jansen et al. (2021) it is assumed that there is a correlation between rumination, worry, performance anxiety (2 aspects) and the negative scale of self-compassion within each group. The relation between the positive scale and the psychological variables will be exploratorily investigated. 2) It is assumed that athletes who participate in competition and musicians who are on stage did not differ in the investigated psychological variables, but because they experience more performance stress both groups differ from a group of participants who either do sports or practice music only on a non-regular base. For that, we assume that the level of performance predicts the psychological variables. 3) According to the study of Jansen et al. (2021) it is assumed that at least worry can mediate the relationship between self-compassion and performance anxiety in athletes, musicians and the control group.