Influence of Personal and Reactive Anxiety on Personality Characteristics, Cognitive Abilities and Performance of Basketball Actions

The purpose of this paper is to establish the possible influence of personal and reactive anxiety on personality characteristics, cognitive abilities and performance of basketball actions of basketball players. An empirical study is conducted with basketball players (which are also students at University of Economics – Varna - UEV) in 2016, playing basketball at the Sports Club at the UEV. To establish the level of effectiveness of the students’ game actions, their performances in 9 meetings (10 units of observation) are recorded. ANOVA is used to determine differences in basketball performance measures for individuals with relatively high levels of anxiety and for individuals with relatively low levels of anxiety. One of the indicators is “personal anxiety” (Q6). Another indicator is available. It is “reactive anxiety” (Q7). PSPP is used to analyze the dataset. The ANOVA test shows that there is a statistically significant difference (p<0.05) in Q21 “Countering a shelter with successful” for the examined two groups of basketball players. The practical significance of the results refers to the effectiveness of the educational and sports process of university students. The novelty of the paper refers to the analysis of personal characteristics of basketball players (such as anxiety) on their performance in action.