The manner with which different individuals respond to this anxiety, however, may depend on certain personality factors and may also change over time. In a previous investigation of the effects of cognitive restructuring on public speaking anxiety, we found that although 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 will be asked to delive a short, videotaped speech, prior to which they will engage in a brief preparation period as well as a distraction task.
Data collection is fully underway.
This finding would suggest the need to investigate the usefulness of long term interventions to ameliorate perfectionists' negative reactions to evaluative tasks.