The Effect of Humor Styles on Anxiety Performance in Basketball Learning Practices

Abstract

Every sport requires players to practice constantly to develop skills and the zeal to become a perfect player increases based on the players’ anxiety-performance level. This makes humor styles of players a significant counterweight to the severity associated with anxiety-performance in basketball learning practices. As a result, the study aimed to examine the effect of players’ humor styles on anxiety performance in learning practices. A quantitative research method was used and questionnaire was distributed to the participants with 201 data was collected. Data collected were analyzed using correlational and factors covariance analyses. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant relationship between players’ humor styles and anxiety-related performance in learning physical practices. This suggests that humor styles can counterbalance the severity of anxiety-related performance in basketball learning practices. Overall, this study provides insight into how sports psychologists can identify optimal humor styles for players’ worry, somatic, and concentration disruption anxiety performance. Thus, this study presented both the theoretical and educational implications.

Plain Language Summary

Effect of Humor Styles on Anxiety Performance

Aim: To examine the effect of players’ humor styles on anxiety performance in learning practices. Method: A quantitative research method was used and questionnaire was distributed to the participants with 201 data was collected. Data collected were analyzed using correlational and factors covariance analyses. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant relationship between players’ humor styles and anxiety-related performance in learning physical practices. Implications: The study suggests that humor styles can counterbalance the severity of anxiety-related performance in basketball learning practices. Limitation: This study only considers athletes four humor styles that influence anxiety in sport-performance environments. Future study should also consider other humor styles in related to athletes’ well-being and anxiety reduction strategies. Given the difficulties in the used of extensive statistical analysis suitable for the study with coping Conclusion: this study provides insight into how sports psychologists can identify optimal humor styles for players’ worry, somatic, and concentration disruption anxiety performance. Thus, this study presented both the theoretical and educational implications

Keywords

humor styles anxiety performance learning practices somatic worry basketball

Introduction

Sports, in general, not only promote healthy lifestyles but also improve self-esteem and peer acceptance (Steptoe & Butler, 1996; Unsal et al., 2018). Being a sports-person requires players to practice constantly to develop skills, as the zeal to become a complete player increases. Thus, players’ anxiety levels increased. This is compounded by monotonous day-to-day practices, which are generally unpleasant. Possibly, little pleasure makes progress easier; this is ascribed to humor in sports with psychological, social, and physical benefits (Özkara, 2013). By definition, humor is an individual’s ability to find joy in life and focus on things that make them feel comfortable (Aydin, 2005). This definition implies that humor is subjective and can differ depending on individual preferences and interpretations. However, regardless of what an individual defines humor, the main purpose of humor is to please, entertain, relieve tension, and create a positive environment for himself (Akkaya, 2011; Jeder, 2015). Ronglan and Aggerholm (2014) suggest that humor is an essential counterbalance to the seriousness that characterizes sport practices. Since sports involve repetitive and monotonous routines, humor is critical for maintaining a positive environment in a sports setting. Without humor, these practices can become overly serious and even have negative effects on athletes. These studies emphasize the significance of humor in various personality traits, including openness, aggressiveness, negative affectivity, satire, sarcasm, cynicism, and positive emotions (Evans & Steptoe-Warren, 2018; Galli & Gonzalez, 2015; Gignac et al., 2014; Heintz, 2017; Jiang et al., 2019; Wellenzohn et al., 2018; Zeigler-Hill et al., 2016). On the other way, anxiety is a personal feeling characterized by tension, uneasiness, nervousness, and worry (Fraschini & Park, 2021; Sutarsyah, 2017). It is associated with autonomic nervous system arousal, as noted by Spielberger (1983), Roos et al. (2021), and Hanin (2021). According to Chan (2000), anxiety is an emotional state that involves both psychological and physical change. Rector and Roger (1997) argue that a certain level of anxiety is normal and necessary for people to take action and protect themselves from harm. Capocci et al. (2006) also defined anxiety as a feeling of unease, nervousness, or worry about something with an uncertain outcome, while Hanin (2021) further described anxiety related performance in sports as a temporal cross-section in a person’s emotional life, marked by subjective feelings of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and autonomic nervous system arousal. In the field of sports psychology, humor has been identified as a potential factor for reducing anxiety and improving sports related performance. Høigaard et al. (2017) found that positive/instructive feedback and humor were significant predictors of athlete and team performance, while Tamminen and Crocker (2013) noted the interplay between humor, emotions, and pro-social actions in achieving both positive athletic performance and social relationships in sports. Bali (2015) highlighted sports as a real issue, with emotional reactivity, nervousness, and unrealistic mental states affecting performance. The negative impact of anxiety on competitive sports performance can create challenges for professionals who work regularly with athletes (humor). While a moderate level of humor can help athletes manage their anxiety, excessive anxiety can negatively impact their cognitive states and athletic performance (Pineschi & Di Pietro, 2013). Therefore, it is important to address humor in sports by focusing on skill development and reduce athlete anxiety in the sports environment. In this regard, using a different types of humor approach in the sports environment may be an effective way to promote learning and mastery of basic skills while also reducing athlete anxiety and their performance.

Literature Reviews

Humor and Anxiety Performance in Sports

Humor is characterized by enjoyment, playfulness, funniness, and joyful amusement, with elements of oddity, jocularity, and facetiousness (Isik et al., 2017; Martin, 2010; Proyer et al., 2021; Struss, 1990). Humor is viewed as an exchange of easily understood entertainment shared through encoded signals, enabling like-minded individuals to come together while still including dissimilar members. Humor is considered as a sporting or non-sporting element that shared a positive communication, relationships, quality of life, positive organizational culture or negative way such as humiliation and mortification which might harm one’s well-being or state (Yaprak et al., 2018). Ronglan and Aggerholm (2014) suggest that humor helps to balance the inherent tensions between “seriousness and fun,”“distance and closeness,” and “authenticity and performance.” It is often associated with laughter, which induces pleasure, especially during stressful and anxious times, caused by environmental and psychological factors. According to Holmes (2002), laughter at work can serve as an antidote to stress and can promote psychological and physical well-being. Moreover, humor can foster positive social relationships, reduce work-related stress, and manifest positive attributes (Calder-Calisi, 2017)

In sports, humor is considered important for educational and cultural reasons because coaches use it to guide and correct learners in practice. It is seen as a way to make teaching enjoyable, relieve tension, improve communication, and create a cohesive and positive team atmosphere (Beck & Clark, 1997). Additionally, humor can improve psychological well-being and interpersonal relationships by demonstrating the “humanness” of practitioners (Pack et al., 2019). Studies have shown that humor is linked to leadership style, team members, and performance (Høigaard et al., 2017; Lovell, 2015). The theoretical use of humor to shape team identity, they have found that humor has a significant impact on both individual athletes and the team as a whole (Høigaard et al., 2017). As a result, humor can be used to achieve various goals and has been linked to positive outcomes such as improving strategic outcomes, motivation, skills, and performance.

Accordingly, anxiety can be viewed as a normal response to threats, danger, stress, discomfort, and tension and can be measured as a trait, state, or situation, as theorized by Horwitz (2017). Anxiety can have a significant impact on various aspects of sports, particularly in real-life competitive situations, where the underlying conditions cannot be artificially manipulated to optimize performance. Performance anxiety, characterized by fear and distress regarding one’s ability to perform a specific task, can affect any type of task including everyday activities (Osborne et al., 2014; Robichaud & Dugas, 2015). Numerous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of psychological interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, mental imagery, relaxation techniques, and other approaches, in reducing athletic anxiety, increasing performance, and enhancing athletes’ competitiveness (Dehghani et al., 2018; Finch & Moscovitch, 2016; Nazam & Husain, 2014). Cheng and Hardy’s (2016) study highlights that performance anxiety is a negative psychological state that arises from performing a task under pressure, which can be caused by external and internal threats, as well as an individual’s ability to cope with them and meet the demands of the task in sports. Tunmer and Hoover’s (2017) study further supports this idea by suggesting that athletes experience positive pre-performance psychological stress instead of negative stress. According to the authors, this psychological stress allows athletes to compare themselves with their competitors, which can increase their confidence and have a positive impact on their performance, despite the stress they may feel.

Isik et al. (2017) viewed anxiety as a normal feeling people experience when faced with threat, danger, stressed, anxious, upset, being uncomfortable, and tense has been theorized and measured as either a trait, state, or situation (Horwitz, 2017). According to Fernando et al. (2010), stated that use of humor help in the use less efficacious coping strategies, higher levels of anxiety, threat perception and venting of emotions from team sports. Also, in many studies related to sport psychology, humor has been linked with different outcomes including effective communication, improving performance (Dehghani et al., 2018). Recent study by Rowland and Van Lankveld (2019) explained that the factors of stage performance anxiety as autonomic processes, emotion, and inhibition and the interactive process of humor and stage performance anxiety—cognitive, behavioral, and physiological factors. Many trainers’ use of humor to contribute toward creating a positive attitude within the team and promote interrelationships among teams and thereby reduces psychological factors.

For instance, Høigaard et al. (2017) argued that the investigations of the relationship between coaches’ communication patterns (feedback and use of humor) and team identity in youth soccer produce a positive/instructive feedback and the use of humor are elements that coaches develops the positive team identity. In another study on humor (mood) and performance anxiety by Tunmer and Hoover (2017) used 12 basketball male students and the result of the findings revealed that as the term “anxiety” is commonly associated with horribleness and considered a harsh term, some athletes experience positive rather than negative pre-performance psychological stress. Accordingly, few studies on the relationship of humor styles and anxiety performance in sports include (Fitzsimmons, 2017; Isik et al., 2017; Sighinolfi, 2020; Yaprak et al., 2018).

Therefore, the relationship between humor styles and anxiety performance in sports, psychology, guidance, and general education draws the attention of coaches, sports administrators, and physical education teachers to a subtle way of imparting knowledge of practical skills to learners for a better output, which is paramount to cleansing all impediments in the way of developing skills, stamina, agility, flexibility, and endurance. This study aimed to explore the connection between different types of humor (aggressive, self-enhancing, affiliative, and self-defeating) and athlete anxiety performance (such as somatic, worry, and concentration disruption) in a sports setting. Specifically, this study examines how basketball players’ use of humor styles impacts somatic discomfort, worry, and concentration disruption in the process of learning physical skills.

Research Methodology

Method

This study used purposive sampling, a non-probability sampling technique, to select from 400 university students who registered for basketball games which equate to a total of 50 teams who participated in the competition. Thus, a sample size calculator was used to determine the minimum appropriate sample size for the study. The study adapted sample size calculation from Taro Yamane sample size (n) = $\frac{N}{1 + N {(e)}^{2}}$ where the sample size is n; N for population size and e is a marginal error. 95% confidence and e = 0.05 were assumed. In substituting N = 400 and other parameters in the above formula.

Sample size (n) = \frac{400}{1 + 400 {(0.05)}^{2}}

n = \frac{400}{1 + 1}

n = 200

To ensure equal representation, we used purposive sampling. Of the 218 responses received, we had to discard 10 during the data cleaning process because of missing or incomplete information. We analyzed the remaining 208 complete responses obtained from youth basketball players in southwestern Nigeria. The players were recruited with the help of team leaders who distributed questionnaires. All the participants willingly participated in the survey. The sample included 128 males (61.5%) and 80 females (38.5%), aged <20 years (16.3%) or between 21 and 25 years (83.7%) as shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Respondents’ Demographic.

Variables	Item	Frequency	Percentage (%)
Gender	Male	128	61.5
Gender	Female	80	38.5
Age (years)	<20	34	16.3
Age (years)	21–25	174	83.7
Team(eight members each)	Male	16	—
Team(eight members each)	Female	10	—

Procedure

Data collection for this study was conducted using a hard-copy questionnaire that was distributed to the participants before the start of the tournament within the match arenas. The participants were given the option to voluntarily fill out the questionnaire, and the leader of each team collected the questionnaire from their team members. The researchers ensured that the participants were informed of the study procedures, and all participants provided informed consent to participate. To maintain ethical standards and confidentiality, the researchers obtained ethical approval from the university sports committee before conducting the study. This approval was necessary to ensure that the study complied with the established ethical guidelines and that the rights and privacy of the participants were protected. Overall, the data collection process for this study was designed to be as ethical and professional as possible, and the researchers took all the necessary steps to ensure that the data were collected in a reliable and valid way.

Measures

We adopted the Sports Anxiety Scale—2 (SAS-2) by Smith et al. (2006) which he used in a similar research on “performance anxiety, the effects of a motivational climate for coaches on young players.” The scale is found suitable because it is on anxiety and young which is similar to this topic humor and anxiety in youth’s basketball skills acquisition. The (SAS-2) scale has 5-item subscales for somatic, anxiety, worry, and concentration disruption. The response to items with the stem would be strongly agree (AD), agree (A) strongly disagree (SD), disagree (D), and undecided (UN) “Before or while I compete in sports . . .” (e.g., “my body feels tense;”“I worry that I will not play well;”“it is hard for me to focus on what I am supposed to do.”).

To assess the players’ perceptions of Humor Styles (HSQ), Martin et al. (2003), the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) was used. The HSQ contains 32 items representing four different types of Humor Styles given by the original instrument, assesses the following four dimensions of individual differences in uses of humor (Affiliative humor dimension): (1) “I usually dont laugh or joke around much with other people”; “I dont have to work very hard at making other people laugh—I seem to be a naturally humorous person,” (2) Self-Enhancing humor—“If I am feeling depressed, I can usually cheer myself up with humor”; “Even when Im by myself, Im often amused by the absurdities of life,” (3) Aggressive Humor—If someone makes a mistake, I will often tease them about it”; “People are never offended or hurt by my sense of humor,” and (4) Self-defeating humor—“I let people laugh at me or make fun at my expense more than I should”; “I will often get carried away in putting myself down if it makes my family or friends laugh.” In addition, we measure the items based on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

Data Analysis

Descriptive statistics were used to summarize and describe the distribution of each variable in the dataset. This included calculating the mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis, and Shapiro-Wilk test to assess the normality of the data. The mean is the average of all the values in a variable, whereas the standard deviation measures the spread or variability of the values around the mean. Skewness is a measure of the asymmetry of the distribution, whereas kurtosis measures the degree of peakedness of the distribution. Spearman’s correlation coefficient was used to determine the interrelationships between the variables. This coefficient measures the strength and direction of the relationship between two variables, and is used when the data are not normally distributed or when there are outliers. The Spearman correlation ranged from −1 to 1, where −1 indicated a perfect negative correlation, 0 indicated no correlation, and 1 indicated a perfect positive correlation. To perform descriptive, correlational, and factor covariance analyses, the researchers used the JASP 0.14.0 statistical software. JASP is open-source software that provides a user-friendly interface for statistical analysis. This allows researchers to perform a wide range of statistical analyses, including descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and factor analysis. Finally, the researchers employed the JASP 0.14.1.0 statistical software tool to measure the relationships between the variables with prior research, specifically with the work of Love et al. (2019) and Marsman and Wagenmakers (2017). This allowed researchers to compare their findings with those of previous studies and to determine the consistency of their results.

Results and Findings

Descriptive Statistics and Normality Tests

This study measured the variable’ descriptives, and normality tests. First, Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics of the study variables by checking data normality of the model and adequacy of the sampling. Consequently, both skewness and kurtosis indices should not exceed |2.3| for data normality (Hopkins & Weeks, 1990). Thus, the results of skewness and kurtosis indices were between ±|2.3| which showed that the variance of the common bias method does not reveal any serious problems in this study as the results of skewness and kurtosis indices indicate that there is data normality of the model.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics and Normality Tests.

	AFF	SEN	AGG	SDE	WOR	SOM	CON
Valid	395	395	395	395	395	395	395
M	3.152	3.902	3.442	2.819	4.111	4.098	4.323
SD	0.528	0.478	0.543	0.593	0.581	0.487	0.453
Skewness	0.106	0.216	0.424	0.531	−1.151	−0.558	−0.869
Kurtosis	0.138	0.576	0.972	0.721	2.977	1.169	1.778
Shapiro-Wilk	0.982	0.941	0.961	0.975	0.916	0.948	0.924

Note. AFF = affiliative; SEN = self-enhancing; AGG = aggressive; SDE = self-defeating; WOR = worry; SOM = somatic; CON = concentration disruption.

Table 3 presents the correlations of the variables in this study. The results correlation analysis showed a significance relationship between humor pattern and players’ anxiety-performance: players’ self-enhancing humor has positive and significance connection with other variables except player worry state of anxiety performance (cr = −0.014) and somatic anxiety performance has positive and significance connection with other variables except players’ worry state of anxiety performance (cr = −0.072). While, players’ dynamics from its two points of view showed that players’ aggressiveness was positive toward affiliation and significantly related to self-enhancing humor (cr = 0.500 and 0.505; p < .05), In addition, players’ dynamics from its two points of view showed that players’ somatic state of anxiety performance was positive and significant to players’ affiliative humor and significantly related to self-enhancing humor (cr = 0.328 and 0.229; p < .05). players’ dynamics from single points of view showed, players’ self-defeating is significantly correlated with worry, somatic anxiety, and concentration disruption (cr = 0.023, 0.226, and 0.057; p < .01), athlete concentration disruption is significantly correlated with players’ affiliative, self-enhancing, and aggressiveness humor (cr = 0.279, 0.247, and 0.236; p < .05).

Table 3.

Correlations Results.

Variable	AFF	SEN	AGG	SDE	WOR	SOM	CON
AFF	—
SEN	0.479	—
AGG	0.500	0.505	—
SDE	0.410	0.185	0.319	—
WOR	−0.014	0.059	0.038	0.023	—
SOM	0.328	0.229	0.319	0.226	−0.072	—
CON	0.279	0.247	0.236	0.057	0.008	0.276	—

Note. AFF = affiliative; SEN = self-enhancing; AGG = aggressive; SDE = self-defeating; WOR = worry; SOM = somatic; CON = concentration disruption.

In addition, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted using parallel analysis method and the varimax method for the applied rotation method. In the EFA, three items were removed by applying the standard of 0.4 for each item factor loading as presented in Table 4.

Table 4.

Items Factor Loading.

Indicator	AFF	SEN	AGG	SDE	WOR	SOM	CON
AFF1	0.589
AFF2	0.703
AFF3	0.825
AFF5	0.766
SEN1		0.809
SEN2		0.913
SEN3		0.871
SEN4		0.710
AGG1			0.759
AGG2			0.895
AGG3			0.865
AGG4			0.748
SDE1				0.731
SDE2				0.818
SDE3				0.846
SDE4				0.821
WOR2					0.589
WOR3					0.703
WOR4					0.825
WOR5					0.766
SOM1						0.683
SOM2						0.873
SOM4						0.816
CON1							0.631
CON3							0.886
CON4							0.820

Note. AFF = affiliative; SEN = self-enhancing; AGG = aggressive; SDE = self-defeating; WOR = worry; SOM = somatic; CON = concentration disruption.

Furthermore, we measured the adequacy of the sampling using Bartlett’s test of sphericity and Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO). The results indicated a significant statistics of χ² (528.000) = 5,285.952; (p = .000) and the KMO measure = 0.815 > 0.500. Therefore, the results for this preliminary tests indicate a suitable and appropriate data for further factor analysis. This study also measured confirmatory factors analysis (CFA) to confirm overall goodness of fit. This factors analysis measures include chi square/degree of freedom (χ²/df), Goodness of Fit Index (GFI), Bentler-Bonett Non-normed Fit Index (NNFI), Normed Fit Index (NFI), Root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), and Standardized root mean square residual (SRMR). From the results of the CFA of the research suggested that is acceptable as shown in Table 5. as recommended by Kurfalı et al. (2017). Thus, the results suggest that the model

Table 5.

Goodness-of-Fit Measures.

	χ²/df	RMSEA	GFI	TLI	CFI	NFI	SRMR
Model fit	1.69	0.078	0.905	0.922	0.908	0.901	0.065
Recommended value	≤3.00	≤0.08	≥0.80	≥0.90	≥0.90	≥0.80	≤0.05

Factors Co-Variances Tests

The study obtained the results from the CFA. The results of the standardized residual co-variances tests show the interrelationship between the constructs as depicts in Table 6 with measures such as the estimates (β), Std. Error (Standard Error), and ρ-value. The results of the findings show that, co-variances factors are empirically supported. Thus, the relationships among these co-variances of the current research were found predicting the influence of players’ humor styles predict elements of anxiety-performance in learning physical practices. Also, basketball players’ aggressiveness, self-enhancing, affiliative, and self-defeating styles predict (a) somatic, (b) worry, and (c) concentration disruption in learning physical practices.

Table 6.

Factor Covariances Test Results.

	Estimate	SE	z-Value	p-Value	95% CI
	Estimate	SE	z-Value	p-Value	Lower	Upper
AFF ↔ SEN	0.730	0.041	17.947	.000	0.651	0.810
AFF ↔ AGG	0.604	0.044	13.763	.000	0.518	0.691
AFF ↔ SDE	0.560	0.046	12.134	.000	0.651	0.470
AFF ↔ WOR	0.061	0.058	1.047	.295	−0.053	0.175
AFF ↔ SOM	0.448	0.058	7.699	.000	0.334	0.562
AFF ↔ CON	0.131	0.068	1.935	.053	0.002	0.264
SEN ↔ AGG	0.734	0.040	18.418	.000	0.656	0.812
SEN ↔ SDE	0.457	0.054	8.402	.000	0.563	0.350
SEN ↔ WOR	0.080	0.061	1.320	.187	0.039	0.199
SEN ↔ SOM	0.370	0.064	5.751	.000	0.244	0.496
SEN ↔ CON	0.160	0.071	2.267	.023	0.022	0.298
AGG ↔ SDE	0.479	0.050	9.637	.000	0.576	0.381
AGG ↔ WOR	0.074	0.058	1.289	.197	0.039	0.188
AGG ↔ SOM	0.485	0.056	8.663	.000	0.375	0.595
AGG ↔ CON	0.081	0.068	1.190	.234	0.052	0.213
SDE ↔ WOR	−0.012	0.058	−0.205	.837	−0.125	0.101
SDE ↔ SOM	0.276	0.063	4.360	.000	0.399	0.152
SDE ↔ CON	0.091	0.067	1.342	.180	0.042	0.223
WOR ↔ SOM	−0.056	0.063	−0.890	.373	−0.181	0.068
WOR ↔ CON	0.003	0.065	0.053	.958	0.123	0.130
SOM ↔ CON	0.320	0.070	4.558	.000	0.183	0.458

Note. AFF = affiliative; SEN = self-enhancing; AGG = aggressive; SDE = self-defeating; WOR = worry; SOM = somatic; CON = concentration disruption.

Accordingly, players’ affiliative has a positive and significant impact on (β = .730, .604, and .560; ρ < .001) aggressiveness, self-enhancing, and self-defeating styles in learning physical practices. This suggested that as basketball players’ their affiliative influence aggressiveness, self-enhancing, affiliative, and self-defeating humor style for practical practices to produce a better outcome. Also, players’ affiliative humor style has a positive and significant impact on (β = .448; ρ < .001) on somatic anxiety performance in learning physical practices. This suggested that as basketball players’ their affiliative humor style influence somatic anxiety performance for practical practices to produce a better outcome. However, basketball players’ their affiliative humor style has an insignificant effect (β = .061 and .131) on both worry, and concentration disruption in learning physical practices. Thus, the results are statistically insignificant based on the finding.

The results of the finding indicate that players’ self-enhancing has a positive and significant impact on (β = .734 and .457; ρ < .001) both aggressiveness, and self-defeating styles in learning physical practices. This suggested that as basketball players’ their affiliative influence aggressiveness and self-defeating humor style for practical practices to produce a better outcome. Also, players’ self-enhancing humor style has a positive and significant impact on (β = .370 and .160; ρ < .001) on both somatic and concentration disruption for anxiety performance in learning physical practices. This suggested that as basketball players’ their self-enhancing humor style influence somatic and concentration disruption on anxiety performance for practical skills to produce a better outcome. However, basketball players’ their affiliative humor style has an insignificant effect (β = .080) on worry in learning physical practices. Thus, the results are statistically insignificant based on the finding. Also, the direct effect of the basketball players’ aggressiveness significantly influences self-defeating style and somatic anxiety performance in learning physical practices. The results show empirical support (β = .479 and .485; ρ < .0001), which indicate that basketball players’ aggressiveness is significant to self-defeating style and somatic anxiety performance in learning physical practices.

In contrast, the results show that players’ aggressiveness insignificantly influences worry and concentration disruption on anxiety performance for practical skills to produce a better outcome. The results show empirically unsupported (β = .074 and .081), these indicate that there is no relationship between players’ aggressiveness, worry, and concentration disruption anxiety performance for practical skills.

Also, the direct effect of the basketball players’ defeating humor style significantly influences somatic anxiety performance in learning physical practices. The results show empirical support (β = .276; ρ < .0001), which indicate that basketball players’ defeating humor style is significant to somatic anxiety performance in learning physical practices. However, the results show that players’ defeating humor style insignificantly influences worry and concentration disruption anxiety performance for practical practices to produce a better outcome. The results show empirically unsupported (β = −.012 and .091), these indicate that there is no relationship also negative impact between players’ defeating humor style, worry, and concentration disruption anxiety performance for practical skills.

Also, the direct effect of the basketball players’ worry anxiety performance insignificantly influences somatic and concentration disruption anxiety performance in learning physical practices. The results show empirical unsupported (β = −.056; p = .003), which indicate that basketball players’ worry anxiety performance affect somatic and concentration disruption anxiety performance in learning physical practices. Also, the results show that players’ somatic anxiety performance insignificantly influence concentration anxiety performance for practical skills to produce a better outcome. The results show empirically support (β = .320; ρ < .0001), these indicate that there is a relationship also positive impact between players’ somatic and concentration disruption anxiety performance for practical skills.

Therefore, all hypotheses are confirmed, and the result was established.

Discussion and Implications

This study aimed to investigate how the relationships among co-variant factors predict the influence of players’ humor styles on anxiety and performance during physical skill acquisition. Additionally, the study aimed to determine how basketball players’ humor styles, including aggression, self-enhancing, affiliative, and self-defeating, predict somatic symptoms, worry, and concentration disruptions during physical practices. The study’s significant findings suggest a direct relationship between players’ humor styles and anxiety-related performance, which is consistent with previous research (de Souza et al., 2019; Rowland & Van Lankveld, 2019). It is noteworthy that the items related to players’ humor styles have been found to be linked to anxiety performance, as humor has been linked to various outcomes, such as effective communication, performance improvement, and anxiety reduction, which contributes to the literature on the potential of humor styles as self-enhancing actions or as a barrier to anxiety performance, depending on players’ attitudes. Second, our findings indicate that humor styles, such as aggressiveness, self-enhancing, affiliative, and self-defeating styles, are particularly beneficial for players with a positive self-view. This aligns with the perspective that humor-style dimensions are related to well-being and individual differences (Brown et al., 2022; Schermer et al., 2021). Prior research has demonstrated the value of a humor style for skill development, leadership styles, team members, and performance (Elkhwesky et al., 2022; Høigaard et al., 2017; Lovell, 2015). Players’ aggressive, self-enhancing, affiliative, and self-defeating styles offer strategies to improve anxiety-related performance. Third, our study is part of an emerging body of literature that demonstrates that players’ humor has an impact on anxiety-related performance and behavior, whether it is advantageous or negative. This significant view of humor contrasts with the traditional approach to humor as a positive construct (Lobbestael & Freund, 2021), providing further evidence that needs to be considered when examining the relationship between humor styles and anxiety performance. In the context of training, it is crucial to consider the potential impact of aggressive, self-enhancing, affiliative, and self-defeating humor styles on both performance and deviance. The lack of significant interaction effects between these humor styles and athlete anxiety-related performance suggests that athletes’ use of negative humor is detrimental to their ability to learn physical skills without worry. The findings of this study also indicate that athletes who frequently use these humor styles may experience difficulties in social and interpersonal relationships as well as increased anxiety, which can negatively impact their physical learning practices. However, it is important to note that athletes who exhibit internal motivation related to these humor styles may be less predisposed to worry or anxiety. These results are consistent with those of previous studies showing that humor styles do not influence the likelihood of worry or reduce sports performance in learning physical skills, such as playing basketball. In addition, worry was insignificant related to somatic anxiety and concentration disruption, but somatic anxiety was positive impact and significant related to concentration disruption anxiety performance for practical skills in line with Tassi et al. (2023). These results suggest that players’ worry as an external agent could posit some physiological symptoms during practical skills, could lead to a loss of focus during real competition. Regarding the negative relationship of worry with somatic anxiety, it is worth noting that athletes, are always concerned about somatic anxiety which is often found that cognitive anxiety is more related to worry than somatic anxiety which related to the physical symptoms of anxiety (Casali et al., 2022; Lawton et al., 2017). On the other hand, it was established that somatic anxiety was positive impact and significant related to concentration disruption anxiety performance for practical skills. The results show that the relationship between somatic anxiety and concentration disruption, as somatic anxiety physiological and affective elements of the anxiety experience do play with any of form competitive anxiety in sport, players’ emotional expression and their external expression and other cognitive indicators (Pons et al., 2018).

Practical Implications

Based on the practical implications, this research is the first to study on Basketball players’ humor styles to predict elements of anxiety-performance in learning physical skills. This research should help sport consortia in recognizing that players’ are in a very vulnerable state of both humor styles and anxiety-performance which can lead to humiliation and mortification which might harm one’s well-being. The findings have shown that aggressiveness, self-enhancing, affiliative, and self-defeating styles are affects players’ anxiety-performance in cognitive, behavioral, and physiological (Dehghani et al., 2018; Rowland & Van Lankveld, 2019). Due to the fact that the role of players’ humor styles are important in measuring anxiety in sport-performance environments is understudied. Thus, coaches or sport psychologist should be able to identify what the optimal players’ humor styles related to their worry, somatic, and concentration disruption anxiety performance. Moreover, sport consortia should be able to design an effective strategies to reduce excessive anxiety performance and to improve their individual traits.

Limitations and Future Works

There are some limitations and future research that needed to be addressed. This study employed the use of cross-sectional approach, with no causal inferences being made from the results, this might affect the generalization of this study. Also, this study drawn conclusions drawn from complexity individual/athlete’s trait. However, there are other personality and individual differences in sport environment that can be explored. This study only considers athletes four humor styles that influence anxiety in sport-performance environments. Also, future study should also consider other humor styles in related to athletes’ well-being and anxiety reduction strategies. Given the difficulties in the used of extensive statistical analysis suitable for the study with coping. Thus, future research should explore more comprehensive approaches. Furthermore, although the SAS-2 and Humor Styles (HSQ) are suitable psychometric attribute, but to further improve on the important of this approach, there is need to conceptualize or increase the psychometric attributes of this model. Finally, in this study, we only selected those playing basketball for this current objectives, there are other various sports that needed measures based on their humor styles and anxiety performance.

Conclusions

In summary, this study explored the association between players’ humor styles and their anxiety-related performance in learning physical skills. The influence of humor style on anxiety and performance was also investigated. This study found that humor styles are directly related to players’ anxiety-related performance and can either act as a barrier or a self-lifting action based on their attitudes. The results indicated that humor styles such as aggressiveness, self-enhancing, affiliative, and self-defeating can be beneficial for players with a positive self-view, whereas the use of negative humor can be detrimental to anxiety performance. The study also found a positive connection between somatic anxiety and disruption of concentration, implying that physiological symptoms could affect players’ focus during competition. In general, this study supported the SAS-2 and HSQ as effective psychometric tools for assessing the impact of humor styles on anxiety-related performance in learning physical skills.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editors and the reviewers for their constructive criticisms.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Consent for Publication

All authors have given consent for publication.

ORCID iD

Philip Ezekiel Dakwo

Data Availability Statement

Necessary data is in the manuscript.

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