Effect of Speech Errors on Observers′ Judgments of Anxious and Defensive Individuals

Abstract

This study represents a follow-up to an earlier series of studies which showed that individuals′ state anxiety and defensiveness were more accurately detected from audio-only compared with video-only cues. Encoding studies also have shown that changes in speech patterns (increased speech errors) occurred when state anxiety increased. In the present study (and its replication), judges evaluated speaker state anxiety from brief transcripts with and without speech errors. Judges correctly identified the level of state anxiety, and two types of speech errors seemed to be influential (speech disturbances and silent pauses). These same speech errors also occur more frequently in encoding studies of speaker anxiety. The predicted linear relationship for speaker coping style was revealed: repressors were judged as most anxious followed by defensive high trait anxious, high trait anxious, and the true low trait anxious. Predictions for two specific coping style groups showed that repressors were evaluated as more anxious than the true low trait anxious. Repressors were shown to emit more speech errors than the true low trait anxious.