Induced anxiety, defensive style, and performance on the TAT

The effects of both situationally induced anxiety and defensive style upon TAT performance were investigated in a college student population. Twenty students were given the TAT under anxiety-arousing conditions, while another 20 subjects were tested under non-anxiety-arousing conditions. The separate anxiety measures utilized were total number of words, preludes to stories, outcomes to stories, combined preludes and outcomes, perceptual repression, and overall psychopathology. Situationally induced anxiety significantly affected subjects' performance; their stories contained more words, more preludes, more outcomes and more combined preludes and outcomes than stories obtained under non-anxiety-arousing conditions. Repressors gave more outcomes to their stories than did sensitizers. While anxiety-arousing conditions did produce these outward changes in story format, the dimensions of perceptual repression and overall story quality were unaffected. Hence, situationally induced anxiety changed the more outward aspects of subjects' performance without affecting measures of their underlying psychopathology.