PSYCH 124S Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Stage Fright, Psych, Drive Theory
Document Summary
An individual"s interpretation of anxiety symptoms is important for understanding the anxiety-performance relationship. To understand the anxiety-performance relationship, both the intensity (how much anxiety one feels) and direction (a person"s interpretation of anxiety as being facilitating or debilitating to performance) must be considered. Viewing anxiety as facilitative tends to lead to superior performance. Viewing anxiety as negative tends to increase the individual"s anxiety and impacts performance negatively. State anxiety is perceived as facilitative or debilitative depending on how much control the person perceives. Some support has been found for this view. Developing cognitive skills and strategies helps people view anxiety as facilitative. Arousal and state anxiety do not always have a negative effect on performance they can be facilitative or debilitative depending on the interpretation. Some optimal level of arousal leads to peak performance, but the optimal levels of physiological activation and arousal-related thoughts (worry) are not the same.
