The relationship between emotion regulation strategies and state and trait competitive anxiety in South Korean Ambassador's Cup taekwondo athletes

Introduction: One of the most significant negative emotions is competitive anxiety, which is one of the main causes of athletes' performance decline.. Aim: The present study aimed to examine the relationship between emotion-regulation strategies and competitive anxiety in elite Taekwondo athletes. Method: The research method was descriptive-correlational. For the purpose of the study, one hundred and twenty taekwondo athletes were selected via random sampling method from among the Iranian population of Taekwondo athletes' participating in South Korean Ambassador Cup. They completed three questionnaires including Emotion regulation questionnaire (EQR), Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT) and Revised Competitive State Anxiety–2 (CSAI-2R). The data were collected and analyzed by Pearson correlation, multiple regression, and ANOVA tests. Results: The results showed a significant relationship between emotion-regulation strategies and competitive anxiety. Moreover, reappraisal strategy negatively and suppression strategy positively predicted dimension of competitive anxiety variance, but this prediction reversed with Self- Confidence. In addition, the data indicated that the men use significantly more reappraisal and less suppression strategies than female. Conclusion: According to these results, it seems that emotion-regulation strategies have effective role in dimensions of competitive anxiety, and the level of Taekwondo Athletes' anxiety is correlated with these strategies.