ABSTRACT
Anxiety was included as an important individual factor because of its hypothesized relation to effort. Each subject received a score of trait anxiety and intelligence. The ability to cope with destabilizing tendencies may be reflected in measures of anxiety. The experiment was conducted in the psychophysiological laboratory of the Institute of Psychology of the Free University of Berlin. The overall experimental design was as follows: Each subject underwent all the conditions of task difficulty, time limitation/choice of tasks, and effort expenditure. The low anxious are better disposed to execute effective self-control, and therefore are superior in coping with emotional load. On the contrary, low anxiety, if paired with high intelligence, benefits efficient behavior. The discrepancy between the initial hypothesis and the empirical findings may be because of limitations in the assessment of anxiety. Such characteristics, however, may be significant facets of the construct of anxiety.
