Self-focused attention and public speaking anxiety

Person. indid.

Lhfl Vol. IO, No. 8. pp. 903-913.

1989

0191-8869 89

Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

SELF-FOCUSED

53.00 + 0.00 Press plc

Copyright _S 1989Pergamon

ATTENTION AND PUBLIC SPEAKING ANXIETY

JOHNA. DALY, ANITA L. VANGELISTI and SAMUELG. LAWRENCE Department of Speech Communication, The University of Texas at Austin, TX 78712-1089, U.S.A. (Received

31 August

1988)

Summary-While there has been considerable concern for the assessment, correlates, and treatment of public speaking anxiety, little attention has been paid to why dispositional public speech anxiety detrimentally affects public speaking performances. In this study we test the notion that high public speaking anxiety is associated with excessive attention to self, leading to less effective public presentations. Results indicate that highly anxious speakers tend to pay less attention to their environments and have more negative, self-focused cognitions about their performances than low anxious speakers. This increase in attention to self is correlated with poorer speaking performances and lower self-evaluations.

While considerable scholarly emphasis has been placed on the assessment, correlates and remediation of public speaking anxiety, there has been little concern for why the anxiety detrimentally affects speakers’ public presentations. The fact is, speakers with high speech anxiety often perform poorly in front of audiences. What is it that makes anxious speakers less effective in their performances than non-anxious individuals? One factor may be that anxious speakers are more self-focused during their presentations than non-anxious speakers which results in speeches of lower quality. During a public speech, a speaker’s attention can vary. He or she may attend primarily to the audience and speaking environment, to self, or to some combination of the two.* To the extent that there are cognitive limits to the amount of attention an individual can maintain at any point in time, when a person focuses excessively on either self or environment, a decrease in attention to the other occurs (Duval and Wicklund, 1972). We suspect that highly anxious speakers focus more on themselves than do low anxious speakers. Why? First, public speaking anxiety is positively related to a sense of being conspicuous during speeches (Beatty, 1988) and conspicuousness can be tied to increased self-attention (Buss, 1980). Second, public speeches require an audience. Audiences enhance attention to self (Carver and Scheier, 1978). This combination of heightened conspicuousness and audience presence should make for greater self-focus on the part of highly anxious speakers (Baumeister, 1984). In addition, research on related constructs hints at a relationship between public speaking anxiety and self-focus. For instance, when anticipating an upcoming conversation, socially anxious people report more negative self-related thoughts, especially when they are also high in dispositional self-consciousness, than socially non-anxious individuals (Scheier, Carver and Colding, 1985). Similarly, high test anxious individuals are more preoccupied with negative, self-related thoughts during tests than their counterparts low in test anxiety (Sarason, 1975). This reasoning led us to hypothesize that during public speaking performances, high speech anxious individuals are more self-focused, and less non-self-focused, than low anxious speakers. The tendency for highly speech anxious individuals to focus more on themselves may explain, in part, their poorer public performances. Excessive self-focus can engender a number of negative consequences. Increased self-awareness is, for example, associated with less proficiency in problem solving (Liebling and Shaver, 1973), less accuracy in person perception (Vallacher, 1978), and lower task performance (Baumeister, 1984). Excessive self-focusing may be especially problematic in the public speaking arena since successful public speaking performances are linked to attention to

*Obviously, there is a continuum underlying this attention ranging from exclusive attention to self to strict attention to nonself variables. Moreover, a speaker’s attention is very likely to shift at different times during a presentation. 903

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JOHNA. DALY et al.

audience and environment. The ability to adapt, to grasp whether one’s point is being understood, indeed to sense the effectiveness of a speech, is tied directly to the speaker’s attention to the audience and environment. When speakers focus mostly on self, their opportunities to carefully monitor their environment and audience decrease, thereby reducing their capacity to effectively communicate. Hinting at this relationship are findings that shy individuals, when placed in conditions of high self-attention, remember less of a speech than their non-shy counterparts [Hatvany, Souza e Silva and Zimbardo, 1981 (cited by Leary, 1983)] and that highly test anxious people tend to focus excessively on themselves which interferes with their test-taking capabilities (Wine, 1971). Thus we hypothesized that there is a significant and positive relationship between the degree of other-focused attention and public speaking quality. In summary, we suspected that highly anxious speakers focus excessively on themselves and become, in a sense, their own worst audience, Consequently their performances, when compared to non-anxious individuals, are not as good. Tied to this notion was an ancillary concern for the relationship between public speaking anxiety and self-evaluations of speaking competence. Public speaking anxiety is inversely related to one’s self-concept as a communicator (Daly and Stafford, 1984). However, research supporting this conclusion is typically based on the correlation between scales assessing speech anxiety and dispositional esteem. Studies seldom probe the relationship between public speaking anxiety and situational self-esteem, or the speaker’s feeling about self in a particular speaking event. The obvious hypothesis derived from previous research is that highly anxious speakers feel less positive about their presentations than their counterparts low in speech anxiety.

METHOD

Subjects

enrolled in a basic Approximately 5 weeks prior to the experiment, undergraduates communication course (that did not include any public speaking assignments) completed a ten item measure of public speaking anxiety that was drawn from available measures. Ss completed the following items using five point scales bounded by the phrases strongly agree and strongly disagree: (1) “I have no fear of giving a speech,” (2) “I look forward to giving a speech,” (3) “Certain parts of my body feel very tense and rigid while giving a speech,” (4) “I feel relaxed while giving a speech,” (5) “Giving a speech makes me anxious,” (6) “My thoughts become confused and jumbled when I am giving a speech,” (7) “I face the prospect of giving a speech with confidence,” (8) “While giving a speech I get so nervous I forget facts I really know,” (9) “Giving a speech really scares me,” (10) “While giving a speech I know I can control my feelings of tension and stress”. The items were recoded so that in every case a high score represented high speech anxiety. Fifty-one students from the larger group were selected to participate in the experiment on the basis of their anxiety scores. The sole criteria for their selection was their level of public speaking anxiety. Twenty-six of the students were selected because their scores on the questionnaire were in the bottom third of the distribution of all the scores. The other 25 scored in the upper third. Participation was voluntary. Experimental procedures. Each S was greeted by one of the experimenters and provided with an outline of a speech on the Titanic disaster. By providing Ss with an outline on a topic we controlled for differences in topic knowledge. Although most participants knew of the Titanic disaster, none were particularly informed about the specifics that were offered in the outline. Moreover, there is no reason to expect that knowledge about that topic is systematically related to public speaking anxiety. Ss were told to look over the outline and to prepare a public presentation of the speech to a small audience. Ten minutes were provided for this task. After the 10 min had expired, each S was taken to a classroom and told to give his or her speech. There was no noticeable effect of public speaking anxiety on preparation time. Very few of the Ss indicated that they needed more time to prepare at the end of the 10 min preparation time. Those that did fell almost equally into the high and low speech anxious groups. This precluded any explanation based on different degrees of preparation. It may well be, however, that high and low speech anxious individuals prepare in different ways for an upcoming speech. We were unable to determine this in the present project.

Self-focused attention and public speaking anxiety

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In the classroom was an audience of three people. During the study there were seven different people who served as audience members. Virtually every combination of the seven composed an audience at one time or another. The decision to use seven different people was made so as to preclude either habituation to the task or group norming. Both of these might have confounded the results had the same three people been used throughout the study. The audience members were unaware of Ss’ level of speech anxiety. Due to the relatively small size of the classroom, the three audience members were quite conspicuous. There was no time limit placed on Ss for their speeches. The average time of a speech was 6.22 min (SD = 0.657). There was no significant difference between the high (M = 6.24, SD = 0.633) and low (M = 6.20, SD = 0.684) anxious groups on mean speech times [t(37) = 0.93, NS]. At the conclusion of their speeches, speakers went to another room where they completed the dependent measures while the three audience members completed a rating form on the speech. Dependent measures. Three sorts of dependent measures were used in the study: audience ratings, memory protocols, and self-evaluations by speakers of their performances. The audience ratings served as assessments of each speaker’s performance. Each audience member completed a rating form that included two evaluative questions about the speaker and nine descriptive indices about the speech. The two evaluative questions asked the audience member to rate how nervous the speaker appeared and the speaker’s proficiency in speaking. The descriptive questions asked the audience member to report (1) the number of stutters the speaker made, (2) the frequency with which the speaker looked at the audience, (3) the number of times the speaker notably read his or her speech, (4) the number of ‘unnatural’ pauses, (5) the number of nervous gestures made by the speaker, (6) the amount of time the speaker moved around, (7) the number of times the speaker looked at his or her notes, and (8) the number of times the speaker looked at the floor. These eight descriptive items were drawn from three sources: (1) scholarly reviews (e.g. Daly and Stafford, 1984), (2) public speaking textbook descriptions, and (3) discussions with experienced teachers of public speaking. Audience members were trained in coding these behaviors prior to the actual experiment. In addition, only indices that evidenced high reliability among audience members were included in the analyses. The reliability of audience members on these indices is described in the Results section. Speakers completed three tasks after their speeches. Their first task was a memory assessment. Speakers were asked to give oral accounts of their speeches. These were recorded. Speakers were told: “What we want you to do is to summarize what went on during your speech. Your summary may include reports of how you felt, perceptions of your effectiveness, reactions of the audience, characteristics of the setting, things you did well or poorly, and so on. You might, for instance, describe how comfortable or nervous you were, how friendly the audience was, whether you thought about what you were saying as you spoke, and so on. The point of this exercise is to think back and tell us your immediate reactions and memories of the speech.” Speakers were given as much time as they wanted to relate their memories. No probing questions were asked of the Ss. Following this task, each speaker completed two other tasks in random order. The first was an incidental memory task assessing Ss’ recall for certain environmental features. This task was designed to tap the attentiveness of speakers to environmental variables that, while perhaps not consciously processed, none the less were present in the setting within which the speech occurred. Individuals who were highly self-focused (and not environment and audience focused) ought to have poor recall scores on the task. The specific probes asked for recall of the color of the walls of the room, whether there were windows in the room, whether the shades were up or down, and the clothes each audience member wore. The second task was completing a questionnaire which had four components to it: (1) a five item measure of how nervous speakers felt during the speech; (2) an assessment of how much they enjoyed giving the speech; (3) an evaluation of how competently they felt they were in presenting the materials; and (4) a four item questionnaire concerning how much they perceived the audience to like their speech. The reliabilities of these questionnaires are described in the Results section. Memory scoring. Incidental memory scores were computed by scoring the responses of subjects to the four questions. For the first three questions, a correct response received one point and an

906

JOHN

A. DALY

et

al.

incorrect one received a zero. For the last item (asking about the clothes worn by the audience members) a score could range from zero (nothing correct) to three (correct description for every audience member). The free recall protocols were scored in a series of steps. First, the oral account of each speaker was transcribed. Then each transcription was broken into idea units (Stafford and Daly, 1984). An idea unit expresses an observation or proposition. In this case, observations and propositions were made by Ss about their speeches. Several idea units could conceivably be embedded in a single sentence. For example, the utterance “The audience was friendly, smiled, and nodded their heads as I spoke” contains three idea units: (1) the audience was friendly, (2) the audience members smiled, and (3) the audience members nodded their heads. Each idea unit was coded on two dimensions. The first dimension categorized idea units according to whether they referred to aspects of self or to nonself aspects of the speech. References to seff included, among other things, statements about the speaker’s internal states, selfpresentation (e.g. appearance, gestures, mannerisms, speech errors), and dispositional reports (e.g. “I’m inherently nervous when I give speeches”). Nonseff protocols referred to the physical environment, the audience, and constraints forced upon them by the task (e.g. “We were only given ten minutes to prepare”). The second dimension grouped idea units into positive ecaluative, negative evaluative, and descriptive groups. This dimension was included after it became apparent that the recall protocols could be reasonably categorized into the three groups. Moreover, some research suggests that socially anxious people generally make more negative self-statements as well as recall more negative self-descriptive traits than others (Breck and Smith, 1983; Cacioppo, Glass and Merluzzi, 1979; Sutton-Simon and Goldfried, 1979). This categorization permitted us to examine whether that same tendency is present with high speech anxious individuals. All analyses of the free recall data used proportions to control for individual differences in loquacity during the oral recalls. The use of proportions was necessary since low anxious Ss (M = 20.64, SD = 14.01) generated [t(48) = 1.89, P < 0.05, q = 0.071 more idea units than high anxious Ss (M = 14.76, SD = 6.72). RESULTS Reliability

A number of reliability assessments were made prior to any major data analyses. They are described in this section. Self-reports. The u coefficient for the public speaking anxiety questionnaire was 0.95. Audience ratings. The effective reliabilities (Rosenthal, 1982) of the audience’s evaluative and descriptive judgments were calculated for each speech. With the exception of two measures, the reliabilities were deemed sufficiently high for inclusion in the study. The two indices that were rejected because of low reliability were (1) the number of times speakers looked at the floor and not the audience or text, and (2) the amount of movement. Table 1 summarizes the values. Incidental memory. The incidental memory measure had only moderate reliability (r = 0.59). However, because the measure was important in our test of the main hypothesis, it was retained. Recall protocols. Reliability assessments for the coding of the recall protocols was accomplished in four steps. First, one coder coded every idea unit in all the transcripts. Second, another rater coded 20% of the transcripts. The agreement between the two raters on what was and was not an idea unit was 0.84. In coding the specific sort of idea unit each statement represented, the agreement between the two raters was 80%. Speaker serf evaluation

Speakers completed four measures at the conclusion of their speeches. A one-way, multivariate analysis of variance was computed on the four dependent variables included in the measures. The analysis indicated a significant effect [F(4,44) = 11.04, P < 0.0001, q* = 0.501. Individual t-tests indicated there were significant differences between high and low speech anxious individuals on all four of the dependent variables. High anxious speakers reported greater anxiety in giving the speech [t(47) = 5.51, P < 0.001, q* = 0.391, less enjoyment when speaking (t(48) = 5.74, P < 0.001,

Self-focused Table

I. Means.

standard

attention

and public

deviations. and reliability incidental memory.

speaking

estimates for personality and self-evaluations

Low

Personality measures Private self-consciousness Public self-consciousness Social anxiety Speech anxiety PRCA Audience ratings Poor speaker Appeared nervous

Stuttering Eye contact Reading the speech PaUses Nervous gestures Reading notes Incidental memory Self-evaluations Felt nervous Liked speaking Own evaluation Audience evaluation

anxiety measures.

907 audience

ratings,

High

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Reliability

37.19 26.46 14.27 21.12 31.04

4.57 5.60 3.84 6.23 7. I7

35.84 26.32 20.20 40.40 49.64

5.20 3.81 5.33 4.59 10.33

2.94 3.81 2.80 6.34 5.22 2.81 2.97 5.71 4.72

I .47 I .96 I .87 2.71 3.06 2.00 I.61 2.74 1.77

4.67 5.52 3.58 4.51 6.37 3.68 5.09 7.20 3.92

I .16 1.79 2.05 2.39 2.60 1.74 2.20 2.35 I.61

0.86 0.8 I 0.81 0.93 0.89 0.81 0.87 0.89 0.59

12.60 16.08 10.80 16.20

4.79 3.33 2.52 2.86

19.44 9.80 6.96 12.96

3.61 4.34 3.34 3.37

0.92 0.95 0.92 0.88

0.69 0.81 0.84 0.95 0.96

q’ = 0.411, less successful performances [r(48) = 4.60, P c 0.001, ‘I’ = 0.311, and more negative perceptions of audience evaluations [t(47) = 3.67, P < 0.001, q’= 0.221 than the low anxious speakers. Since the various measures were correlated, a stepwise discriminant analysis was also computed between the high and low groups on their self-reports. The analysis suggested that two of the variables, speaking enjoyment and anxiety, were the primary discriminating variables between high and low anxious speakers. The other variables in the analysis, after the first two were included, failed to contribute significantly to the discriminant function. The two variable discriminant function was significant [Wilks =OSO, x2 (N = 51) = 32.99, P < O.OOOOl].The classification function derived from the two variable discriminant function showed that 80.4% of the cases were accurately classified. Table 1 includes the means and standard deviations for the four variables. Audience

ratings

The audience members rated each speaker on two evaluative questions and six descriptive judgments. In the evaluative ratings, audience members reported the high anxious speakers as significantly more nervous [t(49) = 3.26, P < 0.001, q2 = 181 and as significantly worse speakers [t(49) = 4.22, P < 0.001, q2 = 0.271 than the low anxious individuals. Table 1 includes the means and standard deviations for the two comparisons. The correlation between the ratings of nervousness and speaking proficiency was 0.89 (P < 0.001). A multivariate analysis of variance using the two ratings as dependent variables revealed, not surprisingly, a significant multivariate effect for speech anxiety [F(2,48) = 9.05, P < O.OOOl]. For the descriptive judgments, a multivariate analysis of variance using the six descriptive ratings as dependent variables yielded a significant effect for speech anxiety [F(6,44) = 3.16, P < 0.011. Univariate t-tests revealed that the high anxious speakers were rated as engaging in significantly less eye contact [t(49) = 2.61, P < 0.01, q2 = 0.121, more pauses [t(49) = 1.65, P < 0.08, q2 = 0.051, significantly more nervous gestures [t(49) = 3.94, P < 0.001, q2 = 0.241, and significantly more looking at notes [t(49) = 2.08, P < 0.05, tf2 = 0.081 than their low anxious counterparts. Table 1 contains the relevant means and standard deviations. An additional MANOVA was computed that included both the evaluative and descriptive ratings as dependent measures. The analysis indicated a significant effect for anxiety [F(8,42) = 3.83, P < 0.0021. A stepwise discriminant analysis using the eight variables indicated that four of the variables offered significant discrimination milks =0.62, x2 (4,N = 51) = 22.76, P < O.OOOl]with classification accuracy of 78.4%. The four variables were pauses, reading, notes, and evaluation as a good speaker.

JOHNA. DALY et al.

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Incidental

memory

High anxious speakers had lower scores on the incidental memory assessment than did low anxious speakers [t = 1.65, P < 0.08, q2 = 0.051. This finding, by itself, suggests the validity of the hypothesis concerning greater self-focused attention on the part of highly anxious speakers. However, the magnitude of effect is small and there is an alternative interpretation that could explain the finding. Highly anxious speakers could simply remember less of the experience than low anxious individuals regardless of the content of those memories. Thus. the following comparisons between high and low anxious people on their recall protocols is critical since they include indices of how speakers apportioned their attention regardless of the sheer amount remembered. Recall protocols

The recall protocols made by Ss were transcribed and then coded along two dimensions. The first was whether the idea unit was self-oriented or not self-oriented. The second was whether the idea unit was descriptive, evaluatively positive, or evaluatively negative. This system, in conjunction with the classification of Ss as either high or low in speech anxiety, yielded a three factor design with anxiety as a between Ss factor and the recall dimensions as repeated factors. The dependent variable was the proportion of idea units. Prior to describing the results of an overall analysis of variance on the dependent variable, we will summarize the results of a few planned comparisons that directly test our notions about the attention of high and low speech anxious individuals. The first expectation was that highly anxious individuals would be more self-focused in their recall than low anxious individuals, who we believed would be more focused on non-self stimuli. High anxious Ss’ (M = 0.287, SD = 0.124) recall protocols included a marginally significant smaller proportion [t(48) = 1.37, P < 0.10, q’ = 0.031 of non-self stimuli than the recall protocols of the low anxious group (M = 0.347, SD = 0.182). There was a supportive trend in the case of self-focused recall. Highly anxious Ss’ (M = 0.708, SD = 0.125) recall protocols included more [r (48) = 1.48, P < 0.10, q’= 0.041 self-focused recalls than did those of the low anxious individuals [M = 0.648, SD = 0.1571. The second expectation was that highly anxious Ss would recall proportionally more negatively toned events and perceptions than the less anxious Ss. That expectation was also confirmed. High anxious Ss (M = 0.607, SD = 0.273) included significantly more [t(48) = 4.42, P < 0.001, r,r2= 0.291 negative statements in their recall than low anxious Ss (M = 0.329, SD = 0.158). On the other hand, low anxious Ss (M = 0.360, SD = 0.191) included significantly more [r(48) = 3.88, P < 0.001, q* = 0.241 positive remarks in their protocols than the high anxious individuals (M = 0.178, SD = 0.139). The 2 x 2 x 3 analysis of variance yielded two significant main effects and three significant interactions. A preliminary concern was whether there was a significant main effect for anxiety on recall. There was not [F( 1,48) = 0.00, NS]. The other two main effects were statistically significant. Ss recalled proportionally more [F(1,48) = 82.39, P < 0.0001, q* = 0.631 self-focused (M = 0.678, SD = 0.144) than non-self-focused idea units (M = 0.3 17, SD = 0.142). In the recall protocols there was also a significant difference due to affect [F(2,96) = 13.44, P < 0.0001, q* = 0.221. The largest proportion of idea units were negative-evaluative ones (M = 0.468, SD = 0.252) followed by positive-evaluative (M = 0.269, SD = 0.206), and descriptive units (M = 0.258, SD = 0.161). These main effects need to be considered in light of the two- and three-way interactions. There were two significant two-way interactions. The first was the interaction between speech anxiety and affect [F(2,96) = 14.46, P < 0.0001, q* = 0.231; the second between focus and affect [F(2,96) = 28.75, P c 0.0001, qz = 0.371. The first interaction has been noted previously. The interaction means are displayed in Table 2. High anxious Ss reported a significantly greater proportion of negative recall items and significantly smaller proportion of positive items than the low anxious group. Further, there were no differences among positive, negative, and descriptive comments for the low anxious group. For the high anxious group, the proportion of negative comments was significantly (P < 0.05) greater than both the descriptive and positive ones. Finally, high anxious Ss offered proportionately fewer descriptive comments than low anxious individuals. Probes of the second significant two-way interaction between focus and affect suggested no differences among the proportions of positive, negative, and descriptive comments about the

Self-focused

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and public

speaking

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anxiety

Table 2. Means and standard deviations for memory protocol proportions classdied by focus of attention and affect and classified by speech anxiety and a&t Focus of attention Nonself Self AtTect Positive Descriptive Negative Total

Total

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

0.13 0.19 0.37 0.69

0.14 0.13 0.23 0.14

0.14 0.07 0.10 0.3 I

0.1 I 0.09 0.1 I 0.14

0.27 0.26 0.47

0.21 0.16 0.25

Speech anxiety Low

High Affect Positive Descriptive Negative

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

0.18 0.21 0.61

0.14 0.16 0.27

0.36 0.31 0.33

0.19 0.15 0.16

environment. In regards to the self, however, Ss made a significantly larger proportion of negative statements than either positive or descriptive ones. Moreover, while there was no significant difference between the proportion of positive self statements and the proportion of positive environment statements, there were significant differences between the proportions of self and environment statements for both the descriptive and negative categories. The three-way interaction was also statistically significant [F(2,96) = 9.14, P < 0.0002, ‘1’ = 0.161. The means for the interaction are presented in Table 3. Multiple comparisons among the means composing the interaction indicated the major cell accounting for the effect was the negative, self-focused category for high anxious Ss which was much larger than any other proportion appearing in the table. Generally, the other differences mirrored those described above in the two-way interactions, the main effects, and planned comparisons. Attention and performance

To investigate the relationship between performance and the focus of speakers’ cognitions, each measure of speaker performance was correlated with the proportion of memory protocols categorized as self-focused and nonself-focused. It was hypothesized that other oriented (nonself) focused protocols would be positively related to performance. As expected, six of the eight performance indices correlated significantly with the proportion of memory protocols which were not self-focused. Nonself protocols correlated positively with the audience’s perception of the speaker’s speaking effectiveness and negatively with apparent nervousness. Further, more nonself protocols were associated with more eye contact, fewer nervous gestures, and less time spent looking at notes and reading the speech. The correlations between speech ratings and self-focused attention, while not statistically significant, were all in the expected direction. Table 4 provides the specific correlations. An additional series of analyses were conducted tying speech anxiety, focus of attention, and performance ratings together. First, we computed an analysis of covariance with speech anxiety serving as the independent variable, a sum of the performance variables [ratings of poor speaker,

Table 3. Means and standard deviations for memory protocol proportions classified by speech anxiety, focus of attention, and affect Focus of attention Nonxlf Self Affect Low anxiety Positive Descriptive Negative Total High anxiety Positive Descriptive

Negative Total

Total

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

0.19 0.22 0.24 0.6s

0.1s 0.12 0.13 0.16

0.18 0.08 0.09 0.35

0.12 0.10 0.08 0.18

0.36 0.3 I 0.33

0.19 0.15 0.16

0.07 0.15 0.49 0.71

0.09 0.13 0.24 0.13

0.11 0.06 0.12 0.29

0.09 0.07 0.13 0.12

0.18 0.21 0.61

0.14 0.16 0.27

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JOHN A. DALY er al. Table 4. Correlations

between

memory

Self-focused Poor speaker Appeared nervous Stuttering Eye contact Reading speech Pauses Nervous gestures Readmg notes Incidental memmy

0.16 0.16 0.16 0.17 0.20 0.19 0.03 0.16 _ -0.09

lP < 0.05;

<

l*P < 0.01; l**p

protocol

proportions

Nonxlf-focused

and measures

Protocol category Positive

-0.34.. -0.38” -0.21 0.40** -0.33.. -0.21 -0.42*** -0.33.. 0.28’

-0.53*** -0.49*** -0.22 0.49*** -0.38** -0.33** -0.43*** -0.35” 0.22

of speaker performance Negative 0.43*** 0.36’. 0.16 -0.41** 0.21 0.24. 0.47*** 0.27. 0.00

Descr~pu\e -0.43*** -0.31. -0.13

0.32’ -0.09 -0 20 -0.X* -0.14 0.32”

0.001

appeared nervous, stuttering, eye contact, reading speech, pauses, nervous gestures, and reading notes (a reliability =O.SS)] serving as the dependent variable, and the two variables composing focus of attention (self and nonself) serving as the covariates. The analysis revealed that the covariates significantly predicted performance [F(2,46) = 5.42, P c O.OOS]as did speech anxiety after focus of attention was covaried [F(1,46) = 5.77, P < 0.021. However, when focus was not covaried the effect associated with speech anxiety was substantially larger [F(1,49) = 9.57, P < 0.0031. Second, in a hierarchical regression we found that focus of attention added significantly [F(2,46) = 3.83, P < 0.051 to the variance accounted for in performance ratings raising the variance from 16% when speech anxiety alone was used to 28% when focus of attention was included. DISCUSSION While considerable research has identified factors affecting public speaking anxiety, little work has explored why the anxiety results in poor performances by highly anxious speakers. This study probed one explanation-that of excessive self-attention. Anxious speakers, we hypothesized, focus their attention excessively on themselves when speaking, reducing in turn, their attention toward audience and setting. One consequence of this apportionment of attention is poor performance. In the investigation, high and low speech anxious college students gave speeches to a small audience who evaluated the presentations. Following their speeches, Ss completed two memory tasks and a number of questionnaires. Consistent with previous studies, highly anxious speakers were seen as more nervous, having less eye contact with their audiences, pausing more often during their speeches, making more nervous gestures, and looking at their notes more than the low anxious speakers. Overall, highly anxious speakers were evaluated by audience members as worse speakers than less anxious ones. Highly anxious speakers also enjoyed giving their speeches less and saw themselves as less successful than their low anxious counterparts. These results replicate earlier investigations demonstrating that public speaking anxiety is associated with both poorer performance by speakers and less positive perceptions by speakers of their own presentations. An impressive characteristic of these replications is the time delay between assessment of speech anxiety and actual performances. Speeches were presented 4-6 weeks after the anxiety was measured. Obtaining significant effects for trait speech anxiety with this sort of delay strengthens the validity of the disposition. While these findings support and extend earlier work, other findings add substantially to our knowledge of public speaking anxiety. As was hypothesized, high anxious speakers, when compared with low anxious individuals, had poorer memories of the environment within which their presentations took place, hinting that they are less environmentally focused during their presentations. Stronger evidence for the hypothesis emerged in analyses of what speakers recalled about their speeches. High anxious individuals’ recalled a larger proportion of self-focused cognitions than did low anxious speakers who remembered, instead, a larger proportion of nonself-oriented ideas. Additionally, high anxious speakers offered proportionately more negatively toned self-oriented ideas in their recalls than low anxious Ss. These results supported the major hypothesis. The question that then arose was whether the tendency for highly anxious speakers to be more self-focused actually affected their presentations. The data suggested that it did. Correlational analyses indicated that greater attention away from self was associated with better speaking

Self-focusedattention and public speakinganxiety

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performances and that greater self-focused attention was related to poorer performances. Ignoring the entire group of results tied to public speaking anxiety, finding a relationship between a speaker’s focus of attention and his or her performance is, by itself, an important outcome of this investigation. It has not, in the past, been demonstrated in the research literature on public speaking. Given the data, one might justifiably suggest that the self-oriented recall was a function of poorer performance rather than vice-versa, as we have proposed. That is, the poorer performance on the part of the high anxious speakers could conceivably have led them to become more self-focused. In the present study, there is no way of completely separating out cause and effect. Most likely there is a bidirectional relationship: audience and elevated speech anxiety increase self-focused attention, leading to lower task performance; awareness of poor performance further arouses attention to self (Carver and Scheier, 1986). Future work needs to closely probe this apparent cycle. The findings of increased self-focused attention on the part of highly anxious speakers is similar to the results of work conducted in other areas. A number of studies have related increased social anxiety to more negative self-focusing (Beidel, Turner and Dancu, 1985; Cacioppi et al., 1979; Glasgow and Arkowitz, 1975; Glass, Merluzzi, Biever and Larson, 1982; Sutton-Simon and Goldfried, 1979) as well as demonstrated that therapies emphasizing the modification of selfstatements can significantly alleviate the anxiety (Dush, Hirt and Schroeder, 1983). In the realm of test anxiety, Sarason (1984) found that high test anxious people experience self-preoccupied worry, insecurity, and self-doubt in evaluative situations leading them to pay less attention to tasks resulting in poorer performance. The similarity between findings in this study and research on both social and test anxiety strengthens the theoretic emphasis on self-focused cognition in anxiety research. In broader theoretic terms, this study’s findings can be couched within Carver and Scheier’s (1986) self-regulative principles. To summarize briefly, they suggest that in social interactions, people regularly interrupt their task efforts to momentarily assess the degree to which they are attaining their desired goals [e.g. impression management (Schlenker and Leary, 1985)]. For the speech anxious S, who presumably makes less favorable self-assessments than the non-anxious person, the process of continually making comparisons has, as its final consequence, “a phenomenology of negatively toned self-related cognitions, a wholly aversive experience that the person may feel helpless to escape” (Carver and Scheier, 1986, p. 181). While the present study cannot directly assess the actual comparison processes, it does provide direct evidence for both the consequence (self-related cognitions) and the behavioral disruption hypothesized by Carver and Scheier. It is important to note that Ss’ thoughts during their speeches were assessed by recall procedures ufrer they had finished their performances. Clearly it would have been best to tap into cog&ions concurrent with performance but, without gross interference through interruptions, this was impossible. Even if speakers had been interrupted suddenly, their responses would not have been truly concurrent with behavior. Very simply, there was no way to unobtrusively tap on-going cognitions simultaneous with oral productions. Moreover, if the results are interpreted as recalls, they still shed light on the cognitive world of the high anxious speaker. They hint that negative, self-focused cognitions are more readily accessible, and thus more easily recalled, by highly anxious individuals than other sorts of cognitions. The idea that highly anxious Ss’ cog&ions are characterized by a greater accessibility of negative thoughts is similar in nature to findings on other individual differences [e.g. depression (Gotlib and McCann, 1984)]. In this study we focused on the apportionment of attention as a function of speech anxiety. A different approach would be to emphasize the dispositional tendencies of people to differentially attend to self and others and examine how those differences affect public speaking. Considerable work suggests that people systematically vary in their tendencies to focus on themselves as public objects (public self-consciousness) and to reflect on their internal states (private selfconsciousness). Might we really be simply tapping into those constructs with our concern for self-focus? Other studies (e.g. Baumeister, 1984) have used the selfconsciousness dimension as an indicator of people’s tendencies to be self-focused. To test this notion, we also collected measures of public and private self-consciousness (Fenigstein, Scheir and Buss, 1975). For each of the analyses described above, we used the two as covariates. The results were not substantially different after self-consciousness was partialed out of the analyses.

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It appears, then, that anxious speakers may be negatively self-absorbed during their presentations and that this negative self-focus may detrimentally affect their performances. Behaviorally, highly anxious speakers focus less on external cues, thus, perhaps, losing some of the opportunities they might have to quickly adapt to changing situational contingencies and audience reactions. The findings of this study ought not be overgeneralized. Some sorts of self-monitoring may enhance performances. In any speech, some attention must be directed towards issues such as coherence, clarity, and pronounciation. Speakers have to attend to such issues or their performances would deteriorate. The question is how much attention is appropriate? When does self-focusing become detrimental and when does it enhance a performance? It may well be that it is a matter of timing. Some speakers may have an ability to quickly switch back and forth in what they attend to, some may have a good sense of when attention can be focused on self and when it is best focused on audience; other speakers may not be as skilled or sensitive. The sorts of presentations people make and their familiarity with the topic, the audience, or the environment may also affect how effectively they juggle the obviously competing demands of attention to self and attention to other components such as environment and audience. Focus of attention is only one factor in explaining why speech anxiety detrimentally affects performance. Other factors may include the novelty of public performances, an overdependence on rigid rules of performance, mislabeling of arousal (cf. Slivken and Buss, 1984), and oversensitivity to conspicuousness, evaluation, and audience characteristics (Daly, 1984; Daly and Buss, 1984) as well as expectation states (Greene and Sparks, 1983). Future research needs to carefully probe the relative roles each of these play in determining performance. REFERENCES Baumeister R. F. (1984) Choking under pressure: self-consciousness and paradoxical effects of incentives on skillful performance. J. Pers. sec. Psychol. 46, 61@-620. Beatty M. (1988) Situational and predispositional correlates of public speaking anxiety. Communs E&c. 37, 28-39. Beidel D. C., Turner S. M. and Dancu C. V. (1985) Physiological, cognitive, and behavioral aspects of social anxiety. Behav. Res. Ther. 23, 109-117.

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