Audience Composition and Felt Anxiety: Impact Averaging and Summation

Two experiments were designed to study the effects a heterogeneous audience arrangement has on felt anxiety. Scant attention has been directed toward this important issue within the audience and social impact literatures. In the first experiment, subjects reported a similar level of anxiety when in front of two high-expert audience members or two high- and two low-expert audience members. In the second experiment, subjects reported more anxiety in front of two high-expert members than in front of two high-expert and two very low expert audience members. They reported less anxiety, however, in front of two high-expert members than in front of two high- and two moderate-expert members. Implications for audience and evaluation research were discussed from the perspective of several models.