A Study of Anxiety Among English and American Boys

Abstract

ANXIETY is frequently a basic factor in adjustment to problem situations. If the anxiety evidenced is not disproportionate to the objective situation and if adjustment can be achieved by rational behavior, the anxiety factor is termed normal, or adaptive. On the other hand, if the anxiety exhibited is disproportionate to the objective situation and adjustive behavior involves repression and the development of symptoms, the anxiety factor is thought of as abnormal, or neurotic anxiety. 1 Thus the individual's definition of the situation determines the kind of anxiety generated. It seems doubtful that this distinction between normal and abnormal anxiety should be utilized in reference to nationality groups or social classes. However, the comparative frequency of expression of generic anxiety by individuals composing a group or class can be ascertained and inferences may be drawn about existing differences in their definitions of objective situations. term anxiety as used in this study does not imply pathology (although anxiety may have been present in some individuals). Rather, it refers to an emotional expression of uncertainty, unusual concern, or apprehension. In this generic sense, it is assumed that the response worried me a lot to a check-list item indicates the presence of some degree of anxiety in the respondent. respondents were samples of English and American thirteenand fourteen-year old boys, thus permitting comparisons to be made by nationality groups as well as by social class. English sample consisted of 600 boys from selected Grammar and Secondary Modern Schools in greater London. United States sample was taken from the same age group in high schools in Seattle and Spokane, Washington, and numbered 744. In selecting the samples in both countries, an attempt was made to approximate representativeness in terms of the occupations of the boys' fathers. After study of the ecology of the cities and with a general knowledge of the socio-economic characteristics of various school populations in each city, a selection of schools was made. All thirteenand fourteen-year old boys in attendance when the questionnaire was administered constituted the samples.2 Each nationality group was divided into three social-class groups upon the basis of the prestige of the occupations of the boys' * Paper read at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society, August, 1955. This analysis is part of a larger study, the English portion of which was carried on by a research team of which the writer was a member, under the direction of Hilde Himmeiweit, and was supported by the Department of Sociological and Demographic and by the Social Division of the London School of Economics. See H. T. Himmeiweit, A. H. Halsey and A. N. Oppenheim, The Views of Adolescents on Some Aspects of the Social Class Structure, British Journal of Sociology, 3 (June, 1952), pp. 148-172; Joel B. Montague, Jr., Research Related to Social Class in England, American Sociological Review, 17 (April, 1952), pp. 192-196; Montague, Conceptions of the Class Structure as Revealed by Samples of English and American Boys, Proceedings of the Pacific Sociological Society, published as Vol. 22 (June, 1954), Studies of the State College of Washington, pp. 84-93. United States part of the study was supported by the Committee on Research, the State College of Washington. assistance of Bernard Pustilnik and Arlene Sheeley, Graduate Assistants in Sociology, is gladly acknowledged. ' See Rollo May, Meaning of Anxiety, New York: Ronald Press, 1950, pp. 193-200; and Allison Davis and Robert Havighurst, Father of the Man, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1947, pp. 212-213. 2 Chi square analysis of the Seattle-Spokane sample based on census occupational data shows that, for a sample of this size, departures from theoretical expectations as large or larger than those found could occur by chance about 4 per cent of the time under the assumption of random selection. Comparable census data was not available to permit a similar analysis of the London sample.