Humans are social beings. They are born in a communication environment in society and are raised by establishing communication by social identities such as family, teachers, neighbors, relatives, friends, acquaintances and bosses until their death. However, the common feature of all people is that they influence and are influenced by people with whom they establish communication. The number of individuals who do not have the ability to express themselves, who cannot speak in front  of  others  and  who have "social concerns" in thesociety is pretty much in the society (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1988).

It is a known fact that all people fear and become anxious under some circumstances. However, measuring the level of this emerging concern is important for psychologists, psychiatrists and educators. This is because treatment process and training programs can be prepared only in the light of such information (Öner and Le Compte, 1985).

Social concern, also known as social anxiety, is defined as significant and persistent fear which emerges in social situations or in front of strangers or in situations that require performance in DSM-IV (APA, 2000). It is expressed as the fear of being eyed by other people in relatively small groups in ICD-10 (WHO, 1993). The main characteristic of the social anxiety is the excessive and persistent fear of individual for being negatively evaluated, humiliated and ashamed in front of other people. The essence of social fear has been demonstrated as the fear of negative evaluation by cognitive behavioral approaches in the study of cognitive social anxiety (Weeks et al., 2008).

People with social anxiety, are extremely sensitive to criticisms and negative thoughts of others and tend to do their utmost to avoid them. These people, who are excessively aware of themselves in environments where they feel concern and who tend to excessively criticize themselves, experience physical symptoms such as blushing, palpitation, sweating and shivering (Dilbaz, 1997).

Wells et al. (1995) have stated that these behaviors to avoid negative evaluation which provide security have three negative effects: First and foremost, these security provider behaviors prevent the socio-phobic individuals to experience negative occurrences they believe that will take place in the social environment; this is because such individuals cannot see that their fears are not realistic. Secondly, the security provider behavior can cause an increase in anxiety symptoms in some cases. Thirdly security provider behavior may lead to receipt of negative feedback from other people. For example, a socio-phobic person speaks very little and remains silent fearing that he will say wrong things or he will be laughed at  and this situation will be perceived as being indifferent by other people and subsequently people’s feedback against him will be less friendly and positive (Akt. Çetin et al., 2010).

According to Beck (2005), social concern is an exaggerated fear of a person for being focus of attention, being evaluated negatively by another person or persons and being considered worthless (Beck, 2005). Social anxiety is described as, firstly and anxiety in social situations that are heard before, fear and discomfort experiences; deliberate avoidance of social situations and fear being negatively evaluated by others. In this definition, the size of fear of negative evaluation from the avoidance of social situations and unrest, not social concerns have been brought  together.  Fear  of  negative evaluation is associated with the efforts of social approval. Fear of negative evaluation of people with high motivation to abstain from receiving approval or consent is high (Watson and Friend, 1969). The existence of medium and high levels of relations between the chronic social anxiety measurement and fear of negative evaluation measurement, reveals that fear of negative evaluation is an important factor in terms of social anxiety (Leary and Kowalski, 1995).

Social appearance anxiety, considered to be a kind of social anxiety, is defined as the concern and tension people experience when their physical appearances are being evaluated by other people (Hart et al., 1989). However, these concerns are not concerns stemming only from the body shape of the individual. This is a more general and integrated experienced concern including reasons such as height, weight and shape of face (Hart et al., 2008). Appearance anxiety is directly related to how an individual perceives his body or in other words his perception of body image (Cash and Fleming, 2002).

Social appearance anxiety, which is a concept related to the individual's concerns as to the external appearance thereof is described as the concern and tension they feel while their physical appearance is evaluated by other people (Hart et al., 1989). In recent years, researchers widely discuss the relation between people’s satisfaction and concerns due to their external appearance, their dissatisfaction with their body shape, their weight problems, their thoughts as to their social appearances and thoughts and their participation in sporting activities due to these positive or negative thoughts (Baker and Cook, 2006).

People’s concerns arising from their external appearances affect their participation in physical activities and their choice of physical activity type. People with high social anxiety levels mostly prefer to do sports alone; in other words in environments where there is less possibility of their external appearances being evaluated by others (Spink, 1992). Participating in sports events, taking place in the event is very important for a person's physical and psychological health. It has been found that a variety of individual and group sports activities, aerobic or anaerobic exercises, being active continuously or discontinuously reduces physiological and psychological tension and develops feelings such as love and taking pleasure (Crews and Landers, 1987). It was observed that all of these are integrated psychological wellness (Steptoe and Cox, 1988).

If the level of anxiety damaging a sportsmen's performance can be calculated it may be possible to avoid it. Likewise, necessary measures can be taken to avoid experiencing concern in harmful dimensions and training can be re-arranged accordingly (Lök et al., 2008).

Anxiety may affect a sportsmen' ability to take the right decisions. Excessive anxiety situation may create confusion in the sportsmen's feelings and make him even forget the exercises he knows very well and makes continuously in the trainings (BaÅŸaran et al., 2009). Sportsmen experience very intensive stress and anxiety in particular during the competition periods. If concern cannot be controlled it affects adversely the sportsmen' performance and success and lead them to failure.  The concerns that sportsmen experience affect their success and self-confidence. Learning the level of anxiety and coping with it is very important for coaches as well as sportsmen.  Many studies examining the relation between concern and performance tasks has revealed the fact that sportsmen with high anxiety levels made more mistakes compared to sportsmen with lower levels of anxiety (Yılmaz et al, 2004).

When the literature was examined, it was determined there were very few researches made in this field and this study was required in order to determine the relation between especially fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety appearance.

Model of the research

This study is conducted by virtue of screening model with an eye to examine the fear of negative evaluation, and social appearance anxiety of teams which participated in the Futsal Competitions organized through Turkey University Sports Federation at Physical Education and Sports College of Ahi Evran University. 

Population and sample

The research population consisted of a total of 230 sportsmen of the teams of Ahi Evran University, Ankara University, Amasya University, ÇaÄŸ University, Gazi University, EskiÅŸehir Osman Gazi University, Harran University, Kırıkkale University, Mevlana University which participated in the Futsal Competitions organized through Turkey University Sports Federation at Physical Education and Sports College of Ahi Evran University between April 01-05, 2014. The samples of the study consisted of a total of 145 volunteers of which 62 were females and 83 were males who participated in the competition (Table 1). 

Data collection tool

Two questionnaires were used in the research. The first one is "Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale” developed through Leary and adapted to Turkish language by Çetin et al. (2010) and the second one is "Social Appearance Anxiety Scale" (SAAS) developed by Hart et al (2008) and adapted to Turkish language and by DoÄŸan (2010); they were utilized as the research data collection tool. Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale is a self-report scale developed to measure an individual's tolerance to negative or unfriendly evaluation by others.  It consists of 12 items and is a 5-point Likert scale.  The reliability of Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale was measured by internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha), the split half test method and test-retest method. The internal consistency coefficient was found to be .84. The reliability coefficient obtained through the split half test method is .83't. The scale was applied to 76 people with an interval of two weeks in order to determine the reliability   by   the   test-retest   method.   The   test-retest  reliabilitycoefficient was found to be .82 as a result of the application.

Short Form of Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale was used to test the measurement validity of Social Appearance Anxiety Scale.  Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was carried out to reveal the factor structure of Social Appearance Anxiety Scale. As a result of factor analysis it was found that the scale has a one-dimensional structure as in its original form. Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was 0.93 SAAS, test- re-test reliability coefficient was 0.85 and coefficient reliability was .88 by using the split-half method. It was concluded that item-total correlation coefficients of the Turkish version of the scale were between .32 and .82.

Data analysis

Descriptive statistical methods frequency (n), percentage (%) was utilized with an eye to analyze the data for personal information. Chi-square tests were employed. Results were assessed at 0.05 significance level.

According to the results of the chi-square test conducted for determining whether there is a difference between the mean scores of fear of social appearance scale of sportsmen engaged in futsal and variables in Table 2, a significant correlation was detected between them and the gender variable (X ² ₍₃₂₎ = 47.013, p <0.05).

In addition, a significant relation was not detected between other variables of our research, which were age (X² = 66.877),  sports  age  (X² = 63.834),  smoking   (X² = 22.593) and alcohol use (X² = 33.715) and the mean scale scores (p> 0.05) as seen in the table.

According to the results of the chi-square test conducted for determining whether there is a difference between the mean scores of fear of social appearance scale of sportsmen engaged in futsal and variables in Table 3, a significant correlation was not detected between the variables of our research which are gender (X² = 41.403), age (X² = 85.291), sports age (X² = 84.767), smoking (X² = 31.479) and alcohol use (X² = 43.559) and mean scores (p> 0.05) .

A significant relationship between gender variable of sportsmen and their mean score and Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale was determined (p <.05) in this study conducted to examine the anxieties of Sportsmen Engaged in Futsal. When the average scores are evaluated it is seen that scale scores of girls are higher than the scale scores of boys. This emerging result may have been caused due to the male gender roles that the society has made the children to adopt and certain behaviors that are expected.

Children begin to learn that there are differences regarding specific male and female gender roles from their childhood period. Gender-specific clothing, games and toy selection and behaviors are the most important points of this distinction. Families are in effort of socializing their children according to expectations regarding gender roles from their infancy period. A child becomes aware of the  expectations  that  he/she  has  to adopt the appropriate gender role of his/her gender after he/she becomes aware of his/her gender as a boy or girl (ErdoÄŸan and UçukoÄŸlu, 2011).

According to the findings of the studies conducted it can be said that girls particularly have a more susceptible and fragile structure compared to men since the adolescence period. Similar results have been obtained in the studies on Fear of Negative Evaluation carried out by Ayan and Ünsal (2015), Lopez (1998), Karabulut and Bahadır (2013), Stopa and Clark (1993), Sevimli (2009) and Demir et al. (2001). These findings are consistent with the findings of the research.

Another result of our research is that there was no significant relationship between the mean scores of the fear of negative evaluation inventory of sportsmen and the variable of cigarette and alcohol use. In the literature it is stated that young people try to use drugs for various reasons such as to have fun, meet their  social and emotional needs, get away from their problems or for excitement or to challenge the  society (Akfert et al., 2009). In addition it is a known fact that sports also keep individuals away from bad habits such as alcohol, cigarette and drug use.

It is observed that the sportsmen which constituted our research group had low levels of cigarette and alcohol consumption. These results my reveal the fact that a great majority of sportsmen and in particular sportsmen engaged in futsal which requires high performance do not consume cigarettes and alcohol and sportsmen do not resort to smoking or alcohol during positive or negative feelings experienced prior and subsequent to matches.

A significant relationship between age and sports age variables of sportsmen engaged in futsal and mean scores of  the fear of negative   evaluation  was  not detected when they were examined (p> .05). This result may be due to the fact that the research group consisted of university students and had sports experience. Although they are of different ages and they have different sports experiences their not experiencing differences in fear of negative evaluation reveals the fact that sports ensures development of self-confidence of individuals, leads to having self-esteem and gives them the feeling of being happy when a competition is won and the feeling of accepting in case of loss. Social anxiety decreases with experience.  Increased experience ensures sportsmen to act more easily in front of a crowded audience, makes them more self-confident and causes them to think individually. This situation can be considered as the reason of decrease in social anxiety of the sportsmen (Dorak and Vurgun 2006; Akçakoyun et al., 2010).

A significant correlation between the mean scores of social appearance anxiety scale of the research group and each variable was not significant (p> .05). In our day, the society increases continually its standard of physical attractiveness and women care for slimness while men for muscularity (Solomon et al., 2001).  In addition of the positive effects of sports the mental health of an individual, it is a known fact that it also has positive effects on the physical health thereof.

Individuals who pay attention to their nutrition as well as making sports regularly may have a much better and proportional body.  This feature of making sports may be considered to affect the results of the research. All of the research group members were making sports regularly. It can be said that the sportsmen were satisfied with their bodies, their appearances did not reflect their character or their personality and they did not spend too much time on issues such as diet, eating and drinking. It was determined from the results of researches made on issues such as social appearance and body image, of sport that individuals health, they give importance to external appearance and they were satisfied of their bodies because of the muscular body they had because of making sports (BaÅŸbuÄŸ and Kuru, 2009; Krane et al., 2001; Martin et al., 2000).

Doing ports regularly affects the psychological and physical health in a positive manner.  Appearance is considered to be very important during adolescence whereas the important thereof decreases during adulthood. Age and sports age variables of the research group were found not to affect the social appearance anxiety (p> .05). This result obtained can be interpreted as they developed their physical image, had self-confidence and were satisfied with their bodies regardless the age group they were in or the number of years they made sports.

It is observed in the results of the study that cigarette and alcohol use of sportsmen does not have an effect on the social appearance anxiety thereof. This result is in parallel with the study of Öngören (2015). However, it has been found in similar researches carried out that cigarette and alcohol use of sportsmen has an effect on their social appearance anxiety, body image and body opinion (Spring, 2002; Stamp et al., 2010).

As a result, it has been found in this study conducted with an eye to examine the fear of negative evaluation, and social appearance anxiety of sportsmen engaged in futsal that gender variable affects the fear of negative evaluation, scores of female sportsmen are higher than men and other variables do not affect the fear of negative evaluation. It was also detected in the results that variables determined in sportsmen engaged in futsal do not affect their social appearance anxiety. It can be suggested that this subject studied can be examined on sportsmen from different branches by application of different variables.

The authors have not declared any conflict of interests.