Examining the relationship between anxiety and test performance: Is personality a moderator? By

The Big Five personality traits have been broadly researched within the literature for decades with emphasis on job performance, job satisfaction, anxiety, and academic achievement. The Big Five are now being examined in a more nuanced manner to increase the current body of knowledge and understanding surrounding these topics. Our current study examines the moderator effects the Big Five personality traits have on the test anxiety-test performance relationship. Participants were randomly assigned to a manipulated low, moderate, or high anxiety condition and asked to complete a task of alphabetizing sentences as quickly and accurately as possible. Two separate regression analyses were performed, one using the aforementioned ordinal anxiety variable the other measuring state anxiety, and both models produced partial support for our hypotheses. Specifically, low extraverted individuals were affected by anxiety more so than others and therefore performance suffered. Low emotional stability and low openness both demonstrated similar results to the previous findings but only within the model using measured state anxiety. A richer understanding of the role personality plays within this relationship requires a stronger anxiety manipulation, assessments of specific personality facets within the Big Five personality traits, and a diverse pool of testing situations, both academic and job oriented. ANXIETY, PERFORMANCE, & PERSONALITY 4 Permission is granted to Appalachian State University and the Department of Psychology to display and provide access to this thesis for appropriate academic and research purposes. ANXIETY, PERFORMANCE, & PERSONALITY 5 Personality has been a topic of interest within the social sciences for the last century with specific emphasis on how individual differences in character traits affect our lives on a day to day basis. Throughout the years research has emerged that systematically defines personality such as the Big Five Personality Model (Barrick, 1991) or the Positive and Negative Affect Scales (Watson, 1988). These measures revolutionized the ability of researchers to study the complexities of personality in a systematic manner. Barrick and Mount (1991) meta-analytically examined the relationship between the Big Five (Neuroticism/Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) and overall job performance over the last few decades and concluded significant correlations between conscientiousness and work performance across five different occupational groups (professionals, police, manager, sales, skilled/semiskilled labor). They surmised, “That is, those individuals who exhibit traits associated with a strong sense of purpose, obligation, and persistence generally perform better than those who do not” (Barrick, 1991, p.18). Extraversion was the second-best predictor of performance but only for managerial occupations and sales representatives. Similarly, Judge, Heller, and Mount (2002) reviewed the Big Five in relation to overall job satisfaction. Inspired by Barrick and Mounts research, Judge et. al. hypothesized the strongest relationships for conscientiousness and neuroticism as they relate to job satisfaction. Their findings supported their hypothesis with neuroticism demonstrating the largest correlation (p=-.29) and conscientiousness ranking a close second (p=.26) (Judge et. al., 2002). These results are complimented by a meta-analytic work by Tait, Padgett, and Baldwin (1989), which examined the job-life satisfaction relationship and how it differs by gender. Baldwin reviewed thirty-four different studies and found a moderate correlation (r = .44) between job and life satisfaction for both men and women however, correlations for men were stronger (r = .39) than ANXIETY, PERFORMANCE, & PERSONALITY 6 their female counterparts (r = .28). Both personality and gender affect our job performance, job satisfaction, and overall life satisfaction exemplifying the dynamic influence individual characteristics play in our lives. These meta-analyses created a strong framework for personality research to expand upon in a more nuanced manner. More recently, Truxillo, Baur, Campion, and Paronto (2006) examined the relationship between the Big Five and job applicants’ fairness perceptions regarding an organization’s selection process. Once again, conscientiousness and neuroticism showed moderate correlations with self-perceptions of their selection performance, and specifically for neuroticism, perceptions of social fairness of the organization. This implies that personality can affect an applicant’s selection test taking ability, which impacts their chance of being hired, while simultaneously altering their perceived level of fairness associated with an organization. Another variable that greatly influences test-taking performance, not measured in the aforementioned study, is test anxiety (Cassady & Johnson, 2002; Lawrence &Williams, 2013; Sommer & Arendasy, 2015). Behavior is often influenced by both situational and personal factors and each must be examined to comprehend the topic of interest (Bonaccio, 2010). Truxillo and colleagues (2006) measured a person’s individual characteristics but they missed the second half of the equation; environmental influences. Sommer and Arendasy (2015) found that people experience more test anxiety in high stakes situations which can affect the correlation between test anxiety and test performance. Similarly, McCarthy, Iddekinge, Lievens, Kung, Sinar, and Campion (2013) investigated dispositional and situational factors that influence test performance and job performance. They found that when test taking reactions were situational in nature, test beliefs, test taking anxiety, and test taking self-efficacy all have an indirect effect on ANXIETY, PERFORMANCE, & PERSONALITY 7 job performance as a consequence of poor test scores. Additionally, Reeve, Bonnacio, and Charles (2008) examined influences on test anxiety and found that the purpose of the test or the consequence of good or bad performance had the largest effect on someone’s expected level of test anxiety. Extension of a job offer, being accepted into your dream school, and passing a difficult class needed to graduate are all examples of high stakes testing situations which could induce a greater level of anxiety. This brings us to the topic of our current study. We examined the role personality plays, in relation to the big five, on affecting a participant’s level of anxiety and ultimately influencing their performance on a selection test. A plethora of meta analyses and empirical studies have examined the relationship between personality and job performance (Barrick, 1991; Hurtz & Donovan, 2000; Judge & Zapata, 2015), job satisfaction (Judge, 2002), applicant reactions (Viswesvaran, 2004; McCarthy 2013), and selection fairness (Truxillo, 2006). Despite this, little research has been done which examines personality as a moderator between the test anxiety and test performance relationship. One such study performed by Chamorro-Premuzic, Ahmetoglu, and Furnham (2008), found that neuroticism and extraversion were better predictors for high and low levels of test anxiety respectively, than other constructs such as core-self evaluations or self-assessed intelligence. Although this study shed some light on which personality traits influence test anxiety it did not assess actual test performance in conjunction with these findings. Similarly, Furnham, Moutafi, & Chamorro-Premuzic (2005), investigated the relationship between the Big Five and Self-Estimated Intelligence (SEI) which has been shown to moderately correlate with Test Measured Intelligence. Multiple regression analyses between the Big Five and SEI showed neuroticism and agreeableness were the only two significant predictors of SEI. This result ANXIETY, PERFORMANCE, & PERSONALITY 8 intensifies when examining individual facets of neuroticism and agreeableness, specifically anxiety and modesty. Both anxiety and modesty when coupled with gender, significantly explained 18% and 22% of the variance in Self-Estimated Intelligence respectively. Our current research aims to bridge the gap between these two studies and simultaneously examine the triumvirate relationship between personality, test anxiety, and test performance. Conscientious individuals have been described as responsible, reliable, and dependable people who strive to work hard and achieve their goals (Costa & Mcrae, 1992). For example, Jackson, Wood, Bogg, Walton, Harms, and Roberts (2010) found that students high in conscientiousness self-reported better organization methods, greater impulse control, and industrious work habits, which correlated with inventories of actual daily conscientious behavior. Similarly, Mcilroy and Bunting (2002) found that both conscientiousness and test anxiety are significantly associated with academic test performance and those individuals with greater levels of academic conscientiousness reported lower levels of worry and test irrelevant thoughts. These findings imply that people with higher levels of conscientiousness would be better suited to handle high anxiety during testing situations. Accordingly, I hypothesize the following: Hypothesis 1: Conscientiousness will moderate the relationship between test anxiety and test performance such that the relationship will be nonsignificant at higher levels of conscientiousness and negative and significant at lower levels. Conor-Smith and Flachsbart (2007) define Emotional Stability and its inverse Neuroticism to include negative emotionality, self-consciousness, and emotional responses to stress. They conclude individuals with low levels of emotional stability tend to engage in less effective coping strategies during adversely stressful situations (Connor-Smith & Flachsbart, ANXIETY, PERFORMANCE, & PERSONALITY 9 2007). On the contrary, individuals with high levels of emotional stability tend to perf