Relationship between Anxiety and Achievement Motivation of Chess Players

Objective: The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between anxiety and achievement motivation of Inter-University level male chess players. Method: 25 male chess players were randomly selected as subjects, who participated in East Zone Inter-University Chess Tournament-2012. Sports Achievement Motivation Test by M. L. Kamlesh and Sports Competition Anxiety Test constructed by Rainer Marten were administered to collect the data. Mean, Standard Deviation and Pearson Product Moment correla- tion were used for statistical analysis of the data at0.05 level of significance. Results: The results show that the mean SCAT Score was 19.08 and Achievement Motivation Score was 32.92 and there was no significant relationship between Achievement Motivation and Anxiety of male chess players of Inter-University level. Conclusion: It may be concluded that Sports Competition Anxiety has no significant effect on Achievement Motivation for inter-university level chess players.


Introduction:
Applications of psychology to sports and athletics are numerous. They focus both on the individual athlete and on the team. Psychology is increasingly involved with athletes, coaches, and trainers to enhance athletic performance through improved physical and mental training. Knowledge of psychology is essential for understanding each individual's motivation and developing that motivation to an optimal level for athletic performance. In order to facilitate peak performances by athletes, sport psychologists must consider the three different facts of anxiety: cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety, and self-confidence. In many sports athletes are expected to deliver perfect performance outcomes, perfectionism in athletes has been shown to be related to characteristics that may undermine performance, particularly competition anxiety. Anxiety is a negative emotional state in which feeling of nervousness, worry, and apprehension are associated with activation or arousal of the body (Weinberg, 1999). The relation between anxiety and performance has been the subject for many researchers (Craft, et. al. 2003;Parfitt & Pates, 1999). Researchers have found that high level of anxiety can have deteriorating effects on athlete's performance (Parnabas, 2010). Studies showed that the high experienced player would show lower levels of anxiety than the low experienced player.
Motivation can be defined as the driving force behind all the actions of an individual. The influence of an individual's needs and desires both have a strong impact on the direction of their behaviour. Motivation is based on your emotions and achievement-related goals. There are different forms of motivation including extrinsic, intrinsic, physiological, and achievement motivation. There are also more negative forms of motivation. Achievement motivation can be defined as the need for success or the attainment of excellence. Individuals will satisfy their needs through different means, and are driven to succeed for varying reasons both internal and external.
There is a close relationship between sports competition anxiety and achievement motivation. Achievement motivation is an effective arousal state which directs the human behavior for successful participation in sports competition. There should be an optimum level of achievement and motivation for participation in competition at different levels namely, state, national and international levels. One should have a desired level of anxiety and achievement to meet the task to be accomplished in competitive sports. The researchers felt that it is worthwhile to find out the relationship between achievement motivation and 2. Methodology: 2.1 Subject: The subjects of the present study were selected from the East Zone Intervarsity Chess Tournament-2012 held at Jadavpur University. For the purpose of the study 25 inter university level players were randomly selected from the tournament.

Procedure:
The Sports Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT) developed by Martens (1977) was administered on the subjects one day prior to the competition to measure the level of sport competition anxiety and Sports Achievement Motivation Test developed by Kamlesh (1990) was administered on the same subjects one hour before the competition to measure the level of achievement motivation of the players. Mean, standard deviation, and Pearson Product Moment Correlation were computed to analyze the data at0.05 level of significance.

Results:
To analyze the relationship between achievements motivation and anxiety of male chess players Pearson product moment co-efficient of correlation was applied. The scores obtained for each statement was added up for the particular questionnaire which represents the scores of the individual and the data pertaining to this has been presented in Table 1.

Discussion:
From the findings it is very much evident that the score of Coefficient of correlations between sports competition anxiety and achievement motivation of male chess players was observed, was not significant as the value required being significant at 0.05 level of significance with 23 degrees of freedom is 0.396.The reason behind no significant relationship between competition anxiety and achievement motivation of the University level chess players may be that the chess players are generally calm and quiet, there is not much physical exertion during the competition and also that the chess players might have adequate mental training during their practice session to keep concentration and control excitement . Secondly, most of the chess players depending on their confidence and level of performance were perhaps not that much optimistice to rank high in order of merit. They were probably satisfied by participating only in the Interuniversity Level Competition.

Conclusion:
From the result of the present study it may be concluded that Sports Competition Anxiety has no significant effect on Achievement Motivation for inter-university level chess players.