Types of stressful situations and their relation to trait anxiety and sex.

Spielberger has proposed that trait anxiety scores reflect a predisposition to respond with heightened state anxiety to situations involving the possibility of failure or loss of self-esteem. Thus it was predicted that Ss who indicated that they were high in A-trait would report anticipating greater fears in these situations and not in situations involving physical pain or danger. The Ss rated 40 situations according to the degree of apprehension that they thought they might feel if in that situation. The 40 items were intercorrelated and factor analyzed. Of the four factors obtained, the three factors associated with failure correlated significantly with a measure of trait anxiety, while the fourth factor, involving pain and danger, did not, supporting Spielberger's hypothesis. Sex differences were found only for the pain-danger factor.