General versus specific trait anxiety measures in the prediction of fear of snakes, heights, and darkness.

Abstract

The relations between general and specific trait anxiety tests and fear measures in three actual situations were investigated. Both types of test were administered to 76 undergraduate females early in the semester. Later, each subject was exposed to each situation, where observer's ratings, behavioral, and subjective fear measures were obtained. The results indicate that the specific tests were clearly superior to the general ones in predicting fear of snakes but only slightly superior in predicting fear of heights and darkness. It was concluded that the overall superiority of the specific measures supported the current trend toward situation specificity in personality assessment. The roles played by threat to self-esteem, the form of the general trail anxiety measure, and sensation seeking are also discussed.Most attempts to measure anxiety have begun with the assumption that it is a trait, that is, an enduring disposition of a person to act in a reliable manner in a wide variety of situations (Allport, 1937). For example, Taylor's (1953) Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS) was intended to measure a person's characteristic level of anxiety, or drive, which was thought to be relatively constant over time and across situations.Recently, the trait concept of anxiety has been questioned. Mischel (1968) has argued that trait tests lack predictive validity because they do not take into account the situational specificity of behavior. Spielberger (1966, 1969), Houston andHodges (1970), and Katkin (1966) have found trait anxiety (A-Trait) to be unrelated to autonomic response and performance measures in stressful situations. Spielberger, Gorsuch, and Lushene (1970) noted that his A-Trait scale (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory; STAI) predicted state anxiety (A-This report is based on a thesis submitted by the first author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree from the University of Delaware. The authors would like to thank the following students for their work as experimenters in the present study:

The stability of behavior: I. On predicting most of the people much of the time.

“…That variable was self-rated attractiveness, which happens to have relatively high reliability for a 1-day sample (see Table 5). B Similar results have been reported by Zuckcrman (1977) and his colleagues (Mellstrom, Cicala, & Zuckerman, 1976;Mellstrom, Zuckerman, & Cicala, 1978;Zuckerman, Note 5). In an interesting series of studies involving inventories, self-rating, and objective measures of fear in a variety of settings, it was observed that the more specifically a trait rating corresponded to a state rating or to an objective measure of behavior, the higher the correlation.…”

Attitudes to Economic Risk Taking, Sensation Seeking and Values of Business Students Specializing in Finance

“…Individuals high in sensation seeking are more extraverted, impulsive, antisocial, nonconformist, and less anxious than others (Dåderman [1999], Mellstrom, Cicala, and Zuckerman [1976], Zuckerman [1994], Zuckerman and Link [1968]). Sensation seekers may be risk prone.…”

R-rated Movie Viewing, Growth in Sensation Seeking and Alcohol Initiation: Reciprocal and Moderation Effects

“…This argument suggests that the reciprocal relation between sensation seeking and unfamiliar and exciting media may lead to an increase of the effect of R-rated movies on the subsequent alcohol risk behavior of high sensation seeking adolescents. Specifically, novel media increase positive affect among high sensation seeking children (Mellstrom et al 1976), and high sensation seekers are more vulnerable because they are more responsive to media inputs with high “message sensation value” (Everett and Palmgreen 1995). Consistent with this reasoning, Slater et al (2004) found that the concurrent relation between violent media and aggression was stronger for youth high in sensation seeking.…”