Motivational Effects of Anxiety on Psychomotor Performance

The Hull-Spence theory of anxiety drive (A) was tested in a psychomotor learning situation in which both correct responses (R+) and competing responses (R-) were evoked by the task. Measures of A-Trait and A-State were obtained from 151 women and 52 men, all of whom were then exposed to a sequence of 16 trials on a mirror-tracking task presented either continuously or with 2-min. intertrial intervals. Analyses of the effects of A were then performed on samples of 68 women and 16 men drawn from the tails of the A distributions. Theoretical predictions about the effects of A on initial scores and performance trends of both R+ and R- were strongly supported, somewhat more so within the A-State classification than within the A-Trait classification owing to the larger amount of variance accounted for. Analyses involving intermediate levels of A showed that R+ was a monotonic and essentially linear function of A.