The manner with which different individuals respond to anxiety, however, may depend on certain personality factors and may also change over time. In previous investigation of the effects of cognitive restructuring on public speaking anxiety, we found that althouhg most students reported similar immediate reactions to a laboratory speech task, approximately one week after their performance, students high in perfectionism reported more negative thoughts about their performance than did students low in perfectionism. The current study is an attempt to replicate this apparent rumination effect. It is possible that this process of rumination may help to explain why certain individuals exhibit anxiety sensitization rather than habituation despite experience with anxiety-provoking situations. Subjects were asked to deliver a short , videotaped speech, prior to which they engaged in a brief preparation period as well as a distration task.
Data collection is full underway.
This finding would suggest the need to investigate the usefullness of long term interventions to ameliorate perfectionists' negative reactions to evaluative tasks.