Gertrude R. Schmeidler

Motivation, Anxiety and Stress in a Difficult Verbal Task

A complex verbal learning task was administered under stress or nonstress conditions to Ss shown by pre-tests to have either high or low scores on anxiety and need for achievement. Subsidiary findings from the pre-tests were that debilitating anxiety scores had a significant negative correlation with facilitating anxiety scores, and also with achievement scores. The verbal learning showed a significant interaction with “drive” variables: Ss high in need for achievement performed better if anxiety and stress were high but Ss low in need for achievement performed better if anxiety and stress were low. Ss high on only one or two drive variables showed significantly poorer learning than the pool of Ss high on all three or low on all three drive variables.

Note on Precognition with and without Knowledge of Results

To test precognition (a variant of the typical ESP experiment) Ss guess at targets which have not yet been selected. The present study investigated whether precognition will occur if S is guessing at a target which ( a ) he will later know; ( b ) someone else, but not he, will lacer know; ( c ) no one will ever know. 50 psychology students who scorecl h ~ g h on a test of visual imagery guessed at 3 lists, A, B, and C, corresponding to the chrce conditions stated above. Lists were composed of 50 items each; chance probabi l~r~ of guessing any one item correctly was I / ) . Guesses were coded for an LGB-30 computer. The computer was programmed to generate a random number from 1 to 5 (designating the target); enter the code number representing Ss guess; tabulate identities (hits) ; sum hits; print out targets, guesses, and sum of hits for Lists A and B; but print for List C only guesses and sum of hits. 5s saw List A; E (but not S ) saw List B; no one saw List C. Ss were informed of the different procedures for Lists A, B, and C after all had been tested. The order of A, B, and C was rotated. In an interview, 44 Ss (sheep) accepted the possibility that guesses of the type they made might show an extra-chance relation to the targets; 6 Ss (goats) rejected this possibility. It was hypothesized that scores of goats would be lower than scores of sheep.