A Model of Anxious Arousal for Public Speaking

Abstract

With the goal of identifying the characteristics or traits students bring to the classroom that predispose them to panic when faced with the threat of presenting in front of an audience, this study introduced a subtype of public-speaking state anxiety*anxious arousal. Specifically, this study examined the extent to which trait anxiety and physiological reactivity predicted anxious arousal during a public-speaking presentation. When combined with trait anxiety, physiological reactivity accounted for 73.3% of anxious arousal. Suggestions for pedagogical and therapeutic practice are included.

A Racing Heart, Rattling Knees, and Ruminative Thoughts: Defining, Explaining, and Treating Public Speaking Anxiety

“…Together, cognitive and physiological traits predict much of the variance in state PSA responses at various milestones (see Finn, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2009). These traits do not, however, explain the entire PSA experience (Bippus & Daly, 1999;Harris et al, 2006).…”

“…Specifically, prospective speakers were asked to sit quietly for 10 minutes while blindfolded after which they were handed a balloon and told to inflate it; the researcher then unexpectedly popped the balloon and recordedthe participant's HR during the next 30 seconds. Although the conceptual distinction between trait anxiety and arousability is not universally accepted, Finn, Sawyer, and Behnke (2009) found the two uncorrelated (r 0.06).…”

“…Anticipatory activation is strongly related to arousability (r0.57), and Behnke and Sawyer (2001b) reported that arousability and AA account for a combined 59% of the variance in a speaker's confrontation HR. In addition, arousability and cognitive trait PSA accounted for nearly three-quarters of the variance in the tendency to panic during a speech (Finn, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2009).…”

“…Adapted from Levis and Smith (1987), arousability for PSA was operationalized using a balloon burst test (Behnke & Sawyer, 2001b;Finn, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2009). Specifically, prospective speakers were asked to sit quietly for 10 minutes while blindfolded after which they were handed a balloon and told to inflate it; the researcher then unexpectedly popped the balloon and recordedthe participant's HR during the next 30 seconds.…”

Anxiety reactivity and anxiety perseveration represent independent dimensions of anxiety vulnerability: an in vivo study

“…Public speaking tasks are widely used to assess individual differences in anxiety vulnerability as they are known to induce variable degrees of state anxiety in participants (Finn, Sawyer, & Behnke, 2009;Westenberg et al, 2009). In the present task, participants were first exposed to a moderate stressor; specifically, being told that there was a 50% chance of them being required to deliver a short speech that would be video-recorded.…”