The Relationship of Anxiety to Intelligence Scores Of Tenth-Grade Students

Abstract

ANXIETY IS AN important concept in both psychoanalytic and learning theories of person ality. It is used frequently and sometimes loosely as a motivational concept. Hall (6) defines anxi ety as a painful experience which is produced by excitations in the internal organs of the body. These result from internal or external stimula tion and are governed by the autonomie nervous system. Some of the symptoms may include a faster heart beat, increased breathing rate, a dry mouth, and sweating hands. Many studies (4, 5, 8, 10) have been conducted with elementary school children and college students to determine the effect of anxiety on different learning situa tions. In general, it has been found that anxiety negatively affects learning, especially in the more complex situations. However, little information is available on the relation of anxiety and IQ of high school students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between anxiety scores for 10th grade students as defined by the children's Form of the Manifest Anxiety Scale (CMAS), and in telligence as measured by the California Test of Mental Maturity (CTMM). It was hypothesized that there is a negative relationship between anxiety and intelligence, so that if a student receives a high anxiety score he will score lower on intelligence. The CMAS appears to be a valid and reliable test, and has become a useful research tool for measuring anxiety level. Studies (2, 7) have shown that girls usually obtain higher anxiety scores than boys, but that the effects are more damaging to the boys, causing them to be more dependent and less well adjusted to society. The effect is not as noticeable on the girls, as it may be they are expected to be somewhat anxious in our culture. Doris and Sarason (3) found that high anxious children are more apt to blame themselves for their mistakes or poor scores. In complex learn ing these high anxious children do not perform as well as the low anxious; while the reverse is true for simple tasks, and in a threatening situa tion where producing removes the menace. Most investigations have shown negative correlations between the relationship of anxiety to IQ, which indicated that the high IQ children were able to resolve their difficulties or that the energy spent in anxiety caused them to achieve poorly.