THE EFFECTS OF FAILURE AND ANXIETY ON INTELLIGENCE TEST PERFORMANCE

RONALD E. WALKER, MARY KAY NEILSEN AND ROBERT C. NICOLAY

Loyola University, Chicugo

PROBLEM The Wechsler Scales have often been recommended to and used by psychologists

as instruments of personality assessment (4, 13). Anxiety has been one of the primary personality characteristics attributed by clinicians to clients or patients on the basis of their intelligence test performance. Research specific to the relationship of Wechsler full scale or subtest scores and anxiety, as measured by a paper and pencil test such as the Taylor(’O) Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS), has been largely incon- clusive (2). However, Sarason (5 ) has commented on the inconsistent relationships found between anxiety and intelligence, and has suggested as did Taylor(’O) and Spence (a) that perhaps stress must be introduced into any situation before anxiety will affect performance on complex tasks. Sarason (5) offered the further observation that intelligence tests often are perceived by a testee as stressful but that the general scales of anxiety, e.g., the MAS, are not the best measures of anxiety and should be replaced by instruments specifically related to taking intelligence tests, e.g., the Test Anxiety Questionnaire@# 6) . It is also possible, however, that students in college, having had considerable experience with tests and testing, only perceive tests as a threat when failure is experienced relevant to a specific instrument.

This study tested the hypotheses that: (a) for college students, the personality variable of anxiety is negatively related to intelligence test performance under stress conditions provided that such conditions are directly associated with the testing instrument; and, (b) the two variables of anxiety and intelligence test performance are unrelated under nonstress conditions.

METHOD Subjects. The Ss were 95 males enrolled in introductory psychology sections a t

Loyola University. A table of random numbers was used to assign the Ss to one of four conditions, three experimental and one control. Each S was tested individually by a 20 year old female experimenter. The mean age of the Ss was 18.4 and their age range was 17-21.

Anxiety and Intelligence Measures. Anxiety was measured by the Taylor MAS and three subtests from the Nicolay-Walker Personal Reaction Schedule (11) : Motor Tension (M), Object (0), and Personal Inadequacy (P) anxieties. These tests had been administered as part of a regular classroom exercise by Es different from the E in this experiment. Performance on the object assembly (OA) subtest of the WAIS was used as the criterion for intelligence and was the only task the Ss were expected to do.

Procedure. All Ss were tested individually in soundproof booths. Each was asked to cooperate in taking part in an intelligence test and told that E was at- tempting to establish norms for college students. The S was then told: “If these pieces are put together correctly, they will make something. Go ahead and put them together as quickly as you can.” Those Ss in the experimental groups (Xl , X2, X3) were then administered an impossible object assembly task, consisting of randomly selected pieces from the WISC OA. They were given 60 secs. and then told that “time is up”. Naturally, all failed the task and it was assumed that this experience was stressful for them. Next, Ss in 51 (N = 25) were told: “Put this together as quickly as you can.” Those in X2 (N = 20) were instructed: “As you can see this is a very difficult test. Try to concentrate a little harder on the next one.” And the X3 (N = 24) Ss were told “This test isn’t really as hard as it seems. The next one will be easier.” They were then shown the OA manikin. Subsequently, the standard-

THE EFFECTS OF FAILURE AND ANXIETY ON INTELLIGENCE TEST PERFORMANCE 401

ized procedure for the WAIS OA(12) was followed for all three experimental groups. The control group was administered the standard WAIS OA without being presented with the impossible task.

RESULTS The Pearson rs between anxiety and the OA raw scores are in Table 1. The

two significant rs were predicted but both were observed in condition X1 only. The nonsignificant rs in the control (C) condition were also predicted. Inasmuch as it has

TABLE 1. INTERRCORRELATIONS BETWEEN OA SCORES AND ANXIETY SCALES

Condition M 0 P MAS

X1 (N = 25) X 2 (N = 20) X3 (N = 24) C (N = 26)

.10 - .30 - .42* - .45* - .32 - .15 - .27 - .13 - .30 - .30 - .03 - .21

.19 .15 .12 . I 1

* p < .05, df = 23

been demonstrated (I ) that anxiety has disruptive effects on timed intelligence tests and that scores on OA are related to performance time, i t was decided to analyze the relationship between anxiety and the number of seconds used by Ss on each OA task and the total test. These relationships for condition X1 alone are pre- sented in Table 2. As can be seen 9 of the 20 rs were significant. There were 110 significant rs between anxiety and any of the time measures in the other three condi- tions, X 2 , X3 and control. The mean OA raw scores and total time to completion were compared for all groups. There were no significant mean differences between any of the conditions on either variable.

TABLE 2. CORRELATIONS BETWEEN ANXIETY MEASURES AND TIME TO COMPLETE OA ITEMS IN CONDITION X1

Time On M 0 P MAS

Manikin - .02 .43* .49* .42* Profile - .23 .07 .27 .25 Hand .24 .17 .54** .44* Elephant - .02 .44* .23 .45* Total .02 .39 .49* .55**

* p < .05, df = 23 ** p < .01, df = 23

DISCUSSION That part of the hypothesis in this study which related to neutral conditions was

definitely supported ; however, there was only partial confirmation of the negative relationships expected under conditions of stress. The performance of S in condi- tion X1, failure followed by simple instructions to do the next task, resulted in definite negative correlations between anxiety and intelligence test performance both in terms of OA raw scores and OA “time scores”. These predicted relationships were not obtained in the other two experimental groups. A possible explanation of the inconsistency could inhere in the instructions used for the different conditions. The instructions given the two latter groups were similar, for in both reference was made to the test, i.e., it was said to be actually “difficult” or “easy”. These instruc- tions were then followed by the presentation of the OA manikin which is quite simple for college students to assemble (no S failed to complete it). Thus, the “difficult” in-

402 RONALD E. WALKER, MARY KAY NEILSEN AND ROBERT C. NICOLAY

structions were followed by an “easy” task on which S could succeed. In either condi- tion S had some feedback regarding what was expected of him and then experienced success. Something seemingly happened in these two conditions, X2 and X3, which lessened the impact of the stress. The failure experience still probably had some effect as evidenced by the fact that all eight of the rs between anxiety and OA were negative (Table 1). In contrast to Ss in X2 and X3, Ss in X1 had no feedback, no anchor. That they did not do what had been asked of them on the “impossible” task was obvious. The ambiguity of the situation was probably stressful, especially for the high anxious. Other investigators(’* 6 , have indicated that high anxious subjects are especially vulnerable to drive stimuli associated with anxiety and when stressed are likely to demonstrate poor performance whereas stress often serves to better the performance of low anxious Ss. This was apparently what happened in this experiment.

Thus, the results of this particular study have provided some support for those(6, 8 m lo) who have felt that a critical variable in anxiety research is a stressor which must (‘trigger’’ the anxiety before it can affect performance. The data, how- ever, did not support Sarason’s ( 5 ) position that testing itself is a critical stress situa- tion and that the only effective measures in research relating anxiety to intelligence are instruments specifically designed to test anxiety reactions aroused by intelligence tests. Naturally, since test anxiety questionnaire scores were not available on the Ss in this study, a direct comparison of the effectiveness of the latter instruments and the measures of anxiety used was not possible.

SUMMARY The specific hypotheses were: (a) for college students the personality variable

of anxiety is negatively related to intelligence test performance under stress condi- tions provided that such conditions are directly associated with the testing instru- ment; and, (b) the two variables of anxiety and intelligence test performance are unrelated under nonstress conditions.

Four groups of undergraduate Ss (N = 95) were administered the WAIS object assembly (OA) subtest and two anxiety questionnaires. The administration of OA was preceded by an impossible task for three of the groups, with Ss in the groups being given different instructions relevant to their “failure.” Hypothesis “a” was partially supported and hypothesis “b” was wholly confirmed.

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