Assessment of Expectancy, a Component Postulated by Apprehension about Evaluation

Abstract

Roscnberg (1767, p. 281) defined apprehension about evaluation as the subject's active anxiety-toned concern, that he win a positive evaluation from the experimenter because he expects the experiment to evaluate his emotional starus. Rosenberg (1969) has consistently demonstrated that, if one presents a cue suggcstlng that the experiment is investigating emotional stability the subject will behave In an emotionally stable manner. However, the definition and explanation of apprehension about evaluation also includes an anxiety component and a component, expectancy, which also have to be verified to validate the concept of apprehension about evaluation. This study attempted to assess whether subjects do approach experiments with the expectation that their emotional status will be evaluated. Three classes in introductory psychology (n = 158) were asked to complete an open-ended question which asked them to state what they thought psychological experiments investigated. One class was asked to complete this question at the beginning of the semester before any subject had participated in any experiments. The second class completed the question during the middle of the semester and the third class completed it at the end of the semester. In this way the effect of experimental experience upon expectations could be assessed. Two coders independently read all completed questions and identified categories which would represent most of the expectations. These two coders then collaborated and agreed upon five categories, including a category for apprehension about evaluation, to represent the expectations. Three graduate students then placed each subject's expectation into one of the five categories (interraters' agreement was 70%, 74%, and 78%) and the responses were tabulated and converted to percentages. The relevant category for this study is the one for apprehension about evaluation. Regardless of the time of the semester in which the expectations were collected the maximum frequency of responses placed in the category for apprehension about evaluation by any judge was 12%. Such a finding strongly suggests that most subjects do not expect psychological experiments to evaluate their emotional stability and implies that the construct of apprehension about evaluation is not accurately elaborated.