Clinical psychologist Magnus Ueland Nygaard, who co-authored the paper with Audun Havnen, professor of adult clinical psychology at NTNU’s Department of Psychology, was drawn to the topic in part by the composed reaction of a professional goalkeeper after a high-profile blunder. The player acknowledged in his post-match interview that mistakes happen and that dwelling on them leaves a footballer preoccupied with the past rather than the present. Nygaard notes that while nobody can see inside a player’s mind, such a response may reflect both the team’s support system and the psychological resilience accumulated over a long career. That resilience, the study suggests, is not evenly distributed across the sport, and the difference may lie less in what players think than in what they believe about thinking itself.

Competitive anxiety refers to an athlete’s emotional reaction to stressful sporting situations, and decades of research have established that it degrades performance. It manifests as physical tension, persistent worry and loss of concentration, and it has been reported as the most important contributor to inadequate performance in football. It is also associated with an elevated risk of injury. Sports psychologists have traditionally focused on managing players’ negative expectations about performance, for example the thought that one might fail. Far less attention has been paid to metacognitive perspectives: whether players worry about their own thought processes, whether they believe worry is useful, and whether they feel their negative thinking is beyond their control.

The NTNU researchers measured the association between metacognitive beliefs and competitive anxiety across three dimensions. The first was somatic anxiety, asking whether stress produced physical tension or nervousness during a game. The second was worry, probing whether players were anxious about performing poorly. The third was concentration disruption, examining whether that worry caused players to lose focus in the match. Metacognitive beliefs were divided into positive and negative categories. Positive beliefs encompass rituals and the conviction that worrying is part of preparation, while negative beliefs centre on the perceived uncontrollability of worry, captured by thoughts such as: when I start worrying, I cannot stop.

The results revealed a clear hierarchy of anxiety. Players competing at amateur level reported significantly more competitive anxiety than those at elite level, and the authors suggest that greater experience of dealing with pressure offers a plausible explanation. Age followed a similar pattern, with older players reporting less competitive anxiety than younger ones. Women demonstrated substantially higher levels of competitive anxiety than men, a finding consistent with previous sports psychology research, although the authors caution that female athletes made up just 23 percent of the survey sample. The study is among the few to apply metacognitive models, which are well established in clinical psychology, to a sporting context.

The distinction between positive and negative metacognitive beliefs carries practical weight. Havnen explains that if a player holds positive beliefs about worry, the player concludes that worry is beneficial, that it solves problems and belongs in preparation. But for many people, once worrying begins it cannot be stopped, and that experience signals negative metacognitive beliefs about the uncontrollability of their own thinking. The researchers’ findings indicate that the belief in worry’s usefulness may be misplaced, and that at amateur level it can actually be detrimental to performance. Players of both sexes use pre-game rituals, including deliberately thinking about their thoughts to reach the right headspace, and these rituals may feed the very cycles they are meant to break.

Elements of the metacognitive therapy framework already appear in sports psychology settings, according to Nygaard, including attentional training techniques and what practitioners call detached mindfulness. The aim in sport, however, is more often to improve performance than to reduce symptoms of psychological disorder. These coaching techniques have been popularised well beyond the dressing room, most famously in the television comedy Ted Lasso, whose fictional coach uses unusual exercises and rituals to lift players out of negative head spaces and encourage more instinctive play. The show draws on real managers: Mikel Arteta has employed pickpockets to keep his Arsenal players mentally alert, while the Norwegian coach Per-Mathias Høgmo asked his players to recite poetry to teammates as part of a mindfulness project that challenged them to focus on what they could actually control, whether playing in front of three spectators or 50,000.

Elite footballers themselves often describe deliberately constructing mental scenarios before matches. Brazilian striker Ronaldinho said in a 2006 interview that imagining the game was simply his job, and Cristiano Ronaldo has reported on a podcast that visualising a moment beforehand leaves you better prepared for it. The technique extends beyond football: swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history, is renowned for running multiple versions of his races through his mind before competition. Yet Nygaard warns that too heavy a reliance on visualisation can become a form of detrimental worry or rumination. Viewed through the metacognitive model, this can increase competitive anxiety and reduce performance, turning a preparation tool into a source of preoccupation.

Havnen’s take-home message from the metacognitive point of view is a shift of focus. When people worry about how they perform as parents or at work, they try to foresee things that have not happened and paint negative scenarios, in effect attempting to control the future. If instead they shift attention towards the things they can control, they can leave unproductive thoughts alone and address what is actually within their power. In football, a game of small margins in which individual mistakes affect the fortunes of the collective, that reframing may be especially valuable. The authors note that context-dependent demands are placed on players at every level, and that amateur players of all sexes and ages put pressure on their own performances just as professionals do.

Not all players, however, have access to the same reserves of support or experience to draw upon. Sportspeople are competitive by nature, and the way they think about their stress levels may shape how they play. The researchers therefore suggest that interventions should be adapted to an athlete’s level of experience, rather than assuming that techniques developed for elite squads will transfer automatically to the amateur game. For a sport in which a single lapse of concentration can decide a match, the study offers a technically grounded conclusion: managing anxiety may begin not with suppressing negative thoughts, but with changing what players believe about the thoughts themselves.

Subject of Research: The relationship between metacognitive beliefs and competitive anxiety among elite and amateur football players

Article Title: The relationship between metacognition and performance anxiety in football

Article References: The relationship between metacognition and performance anxiety in football. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: metacognition, competitive anxiety, football, sports psychology, NTNU, amateur athletes, elite athletes, worry, visualisation, detached mindfulness, performance, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living

The research, led by Lydia Munns, Chloé Xin-Tong Lu and Alex Lau-Zhu of the Department of Experimental Psychology, set out to fill a gap that has frustrated cognitive theorists for years. Cognitive accounts of anxiety disorders hold that flashforwards are not just a curiosity of the anxious mind but a core maintaining mechanism: sensory-based, affect-laden mental simulations of future threats that arrive unbidden and are experienced as plausible or even impending. Unlike deliberate planning or worry expressed in words, these images carry the vividness of perception, recruiting similar neural and bodily responses as actual events, which may be precisely what makes them so distressing and so persistent.

Yet the field’s standard instruments have largely ignored this phenomenon. Existing imagery questionnaires tend to focus on the vividness or frequency of mental images in general, without targeting future-oriented intrusions, while established anxiety scales measure worry, avoidance and physiological arousal, leaving flashforwards either unmeasured or entangled with other symptoms. That measurement gap, the authors argue, has limited both theoretical insight into how intrusive future imagery drives anxiety and clinical progress in designing interventions that target it directly. To build their scale, the team grounded item development in theory and in previously published measures, and crucially involved stakeholders, gathering feedback from young people and clinicians to ensure the questions reflected real experiences.

The validation study recruited 538 young adults aged between 16 and 24, a window chosen deliberately because adolescence and young adulthood is the developmental period in which many anxiety disorders first emerge. Participants completed the new OFAS alongside the Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7, a widely used clinical screening tool, together with other key measures of related constructs. A subset of 306 participants returned for a follow-up assessment two weeks later, allowing the researchers to examine whether flashforward imagery measured at baseline predicted later anxiety. Smaller subgroups, including 124 participants with lagged data, supported additional longitudinal and network analyses.

The psychometric results were strikingly clean. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses converged on a single-factor solution: a compact ten-item scale in which all items tap one underlying construct, the overall salience of intrusive flashforward imagery. The one-factor model showed good fit to the data, and reliability was high, meaning the items consistently measured the same thing across respondents. The researchers also tested whether the scale behaved equivalently across age groups, and demonstrated measurement invariance when comparing participants aged 19 or younger with those over 19, an important property for any instrument intended to be used across adolescence and young adulthood without artifactual score differences.

Validity evidence came from several directions. Concurrent validity was supported by the expected associations between OFAS scores and existing anxiety measures. Incremental validity, the ability of the new scale to explain variance beyond what other instruments capture, was demonstrated, addressing the central criticism that previous measures confound future imagery with broader anxiety symptoms. Discriminant validity was likewise supported, indicating that the scale measures flashforward imagery as a distinguishable construct rather than simply re-labeling worry or fear. Together these analyses suggest the OFAS genuinely isolates the cognitive process it was designed to measure.

Perhaps the most compelling findings came from the prospective and network analyses. In the lagged analysis, flashforward imagery at baseline predicted anxiety levels two weeks later, even after statistically controlling for baseline anxiety and covariates. That pattern of prediction is what psychometricians call predictive validity, and it hints at something more provocative: intrusive images of feared futures may not merely accompany anxiety but anticipate its course. In a cross-sectional world of correlational data, a simple two-week lagged design cannot prove causation, but it moves the evidence a meaningful step beyond co-occurrence, consistent with cognitive models in which vivid threat simulations fuel and perpetuate anxious states.

Network analysis, an increasingly popular statistical approach that treats psychological symptoms as interconnected nodes in a system rather than as parts of a latent disorder, added another layer of nuance. In the anxiety network reconstructed from the data, flashforward imagery was not itself the most central node. That distinction belonged to worry, the repetitive verbal or conceptual rumination about future threat that has long dominated anxiety research. But flashforward imagery was closely connected to worry, sitting adjacent to the network’s most central symptom. The authors interpret this as further support for the scale’s construct validity, and it sketches an intriguing architecture of anxious cognition: word-based worry may occupy the hub, while image-based flashforwards form a tightly linked satellite, feeding into and drawing from the worry process.

The practical implications extend in several directions. Clinically, a brief, freely usable and psychometrically validated measure of flashforward salience gives researchers and practitioners a tool to identify individuals whose anxiety is driven disproportionately by intrusive future imagery, and to evaluate whether imagery-focused interventions, such as cognitive techniques that compete with or rescript threat images, change the outcomes that matter. The scale’s deliberate anchoring to mental imagery, without conflation with avoidance or hyperarousal, means treatment studies can now test whether targeting flashforwards specifically produces benefits that generic anxiety reduction does not. Developmentally, the demonstrated invariance across age groups makes the instrument suitable for studying the period when anxiety disorders typically take hold, potentially enabling earlier identification of young people at risk.

For a phenomenon that millions of people experience in the seconds before their stomach drops, flashforwards have been remarkably underserved by measurement science. This new scale does not resolve whether intrusive future imagery causes anxiety, but it provides the rigorous instrument that such questions require, and its predictive and network findings suggest the hypothesis is worth taking seriously. As the authors conclude, the validated tool promotes the study of flashforwards as a distinct cognitive process in anxiety and can provide a foundation to guide anxiety treatment innovation. If future research builds on this foundation, the fleeting, unwelcome pictures of catastrophe that flash through anxious minds may finally get the scientific attention their subjective impact has always demanded.

Subject of Research: Development and validation of a questionnaire measuring intrusive future-oriented mental imagery in anxiety

Article Title: Intrusive “flashforward” imagery and anxiety: development and validation of the Oxford Flashforwards in Anxiety Scale (OFAS)

Article References: Munns, L., Lu, C. X.-T., & Lau-Zhu, A. (2026). Intrusive “flashforward” imagery and anxiety: development and validation of the Oxford Flashforwards in Anxiety Scale (OFAS). BMC Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-026-08680-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12888-026-08680-z

Keywords: anxiety, mental imagery, flashforwards, psychometrics, scale validation, worry, adolescence, young adults, cognitive psychology, BMC Psychiatry, network analysis, predictive validity

The first study employed a cross-sectional design to assess associations between various cognitive strategies and climate outcomes. The sample consisted of 442 participants aged between 18 and 24 years, with 75.8 percent identifying as female. Researchers measured levels of rumination, catastrophising, positive refocusing, and refocus on planning. These cognitive variables were then analyzed in relation to self-reported climate anxiety and pro-environmental behaviour. This initial phase provided a baseline understanding of how different mental processes align with emotional responses to climate change and subsequent environmental actions.

Results from the cross-sectional study indicated that rumination emerged as the strongest correlate of climate anxiety. Participants who engaged more frequently in repetitive, negative thinking about climate issues reported higher levels of anxiety. Conversely, refocus on planning was identified as the strongest correlate of pro-environmental behaviour. This suggests that while dwelling on negative aspects of climate change is linked to distress, the act of planning may be associated with greater engagement in environmental activities. The distinction between these two cognitive strategies highlights the nuanced role of mental processing in climate-related psychology.

To test whether these associations could be leveraged for intervention, the second study was conducted as a randomised controlled trial. This phase involved 89 young adults, also aged 18 to 24, with a higher proportion of female participants at 92.1 percent. The trial compared three conditions: a control group, a group engaging in expressive writing, and a group combining expressive writing with planning exercises. The study assessed changes in climate anxiety, climate worry, pro-environmental behaviour or intentions, rumination, and planning across repeated measurements to determine the impact of these brief interventions.

The findings from the randomised controlled trial revealed that neither the expressive writing nor the combined writing and planning interventions led to significant long-term changes in the measured outcomes. Specifically, the interventions did not result in reduced climate anxiety or climate worry, nor did they increase pro-environmental behaviour or behavioural intentions. Furthermore, there were no significant changes in the levels of rumination or refocus on planning over time. This lack of effect suggests that brief, self-guided cognitive exercises may be insufficient to produce meaningful shifts in the complex relationship between climate distress and environmental action.

Despite the absence of long-term benefits, the study observed short-term effects immediately following the exercises. Both intervention groups experienced increases in climate worry in the immediate aftermath of the writing tasks. This transient rise in worry indicates that confronting climate-related thoughts through writing can temporarily heighten emotional distress. However, these short-term spikes did not translate into sustained improvements in well-being or behaviour, underscoring the limitations of simple writing exercises as a standalone therapeutic tool for climate anxiety.

Exploratory analyses provided additional insight into the dynamic relationship between cognitive strategies and emotional outcomes. The researchers found that increases in rumination, observed across all conditions including the control group, were associated with subsequent increases in climate anxiety and climate worry over time. This temporal association reinforces the link between repetitive negative thinking and the escalation of distress. It suggests that rumination may serve as a mechanism through which climate-related concerns intensify, potentially creating a cycle of increasing anxiety and worry.

The study’s conclusions highlight the complex interplay between cognitive emotion regulation and climate-related outcomes. Rumination appears to be a consistent correlate of climate distress, acting as a potential driver of anxiety and worry. On the other hand, planning seems to accompany both climate concern and pro-environmental engagement, suggesting a dual role in how young adults process and respond to environmental threats. The findings imply that effective interventions may need to target specific cognitive patterns more directly or employ more intensive methods than brief self-guided exercises.

These results contribute to the growing body of literature on the psychological impacts of climate change. By distinguishing between the detrimental effects of rumination and the potential benefits of planning, the study offers a more granular view of climate anxiety. The lack of efficacy for the brief interventions tested suggests that future research should explore more robust therapeutic approaches, possibly drawing from cognitive behavioural therapy principles, to help young adults manage climate distress without hindering their pro-environmental motivations. The study underscores the need for tailored strategies that address the specific cognitive mechanisms underlying climate-related psychological responses.

The research was partially funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency, supporting the project on the prevalence and factors of climate anxiety among Slovenian youth. The authors emphasize that the findings are based on a specific population of young adults in Slovenia, and further research is needed to determine the generalizability of these results to other demographics and contexts. As climate change continues to pose significant challenges, understanding the psychological dimensions of this crisis remains crucial for developing effective support systems and fostering sustainable behavioural change.

Subject of Research: Psychology

Article Title: The role of rumination and planning in climate anxiety, worry, and pro-environmental behaviour among young adults: evidence from two studies

Article References: Smrke, U., Gračner, J., Zorjan, S., & Plohl, N. (2026). The role of rumination and planning in climate anxiety, worry, and pro-environmental behaviour among young adults: evidence from two studies. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05700-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05700-1

Keywords: Climate Anxiety, Rumination, Pro-environmental Behaviour, Cognitive Emotion Regulation, Young Adults, Randomised Controlled Trial, role, planning, climate, anxiety, worry, pro-environmental