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Those who have had the yips report more social anxiety and a stronger need to hide their flaws

1 study · 155 archers measured

ForContextAgainst20202022202420262020, context, n = 1552020, for, n = 692020, against, n = 69
Each circle is a study: its position gives the year, its row whether it is for, against or context, its size how many participants it measured. Light circles are studies on other populations or without archers.

There is a single British study of 155 competitive athletes, 69 archers and 86 golfers, with target panic in the archers and the yips in the golfers put into the same question. Across the whole sample those who report the problem have more social anxiety (F = 5.07, p < 0.05), are more inclined not to display their imperfections (F = 6.73, p < 0.01) and to present themselves as perfect (F = 6.44, p < 0.05). In the means by sport, however, the picture splits. In the archers social anxiety is the same, 3.07 in those with target panic against 3.05 in those without, while in the golfers it is 3.60 against 3.02; the need not to display flaws points the way the claim does in the archers too, 3.82 against 3.51, but the gap is small next to the golfers' 4.66 against 3.66. The paper runs no separate tests by sport, the overall effect of the yips narrowly misses significance (p = 0.06), and the measures are questionnaires collected after the problem had appeared, so they cannot say which comes first.

Also phrased as: "target panic and fear of judgement"; "fear of failing in front of others"; "yips and social anxiety"; "target panic and perfectionism"; "feeling watched in competition"

In practice

Target panic is said to strike those who fear other people's judgement, the archer who feels every eye on them in competition and cannot bear to be seen making a mistake.

Evidence

  • 2020
    For Archers Published later

    69 British competitive archers, within a sample of 155 athletes including 86 golfers: in the archers who report target panic non-display of imperfection is 3.82 ± 1.13 against 3.51 ± 1.23, and perfectionistic self-promotion 3.97 ± 0.92 against 3.80 ± 1.05. Across the whole sample both differences are significant (F = 6.73, p < 0.01; F = 6.44, p < 0.05), but in the golfers the gap is much wider, 4.66 against 3.66 and 4.67 against 3.76.

    Personality Predictors of Yips and Choking Susceptibility · Philip Clarke, David Sheffield, Sally Akehurst

  • 2020
    Against Archers Published later

    In the same study social anxiety, measured with the Self-Consciousness Scale subscale, is 3.07 ± 0.46 in archers with target panic against 3.05 ± 0.67 in those without: no difference. The difference across the whole sample (F = 5.07, p < 0.05) comes from golfers with the yips, 3.60 ± 0.65 against 3.02 ± 0.67. The multivariate test comparing the effect of the yips across the two sports is not significant (p = 0.08), so within the archers the comparison remains descriptive.

    Personality Predictors of Yips and Choking Susceptibility · Philip Clarke, David Sheffield, Sally Akehurst

  • 2020
    Context Archers Published later

    Across the whole sample of archers and golfers, the discriminant analysis for the yips uses the four variables that differ (conscientiousness, social anxiety, non-display of imperfection, perfectionistic self-promotion) and classifies 69 per cent of the athletes correctly (canonical R² 0.37), with conscientiousness and perfectionistic self-promotion as the largest contributors. The overall multivariate effect of the yips misses significance (p = 0.06).

    Personality Predictors of Yips and Choking Susceptibility · Philip Clarke, David Sheffield, Sally Akehurst

Status history

  1. 1990 Not studied In the registry's bibliography nobody had yet compared the social anxiety or perfectionism of archers with target panic against those of archers without it: the idea that the problem grows out of fear of judgement circulated without data.
  2. 2020 Contested The first and only study arrives, on 69 archers and 86 British competitive golfers. Across the whole sample those who report the yips or target panic have more social anxiety and a stronger need not to display their imperfections, but in the means for the archers alone the two halves of the claim come apart: social anxiety is 3.07 against 3.05, which is the same, while non-display of imperfection rises from 3.51 to 3.82. The clearest differences come from the golfers, and the paper runs no tests within archery. With half of the claim holding in archers and half not, in the same study: contested.

Related

Related articles

Research lines

Cite
APA

Campagna, M. (2026). Those who have had the yips report more social anxiety and a stronger need to hide their flaws (Version 2). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/yips-social-anxiety-hiding-flaws

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_yipsansiasociale,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {Those who have had the yips report more social anxiety and a stronger need to hide their flaws},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/yips-social-anxiety-hiding-flaws},
  note = {Version 2; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

Other claims in this domain

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