Evaluation Apprehension

Evaluation Apprehension

1. Cottrell claimed that people experience this in the presence of others and think that they are evaluating our performance

2. this causes arousal and results in performance being enhanced

3. Bartis et al 1988

   • wanted to see if evaluation apprehension would lead to improvement of performance on simple tasks and inhibit performance on complex tasks
   • asked one group to list uses of knives and another to list creative uses of knives
     • some people were told their performance would be identified
   • those performing the simple task produced more uses in the evaluation apprehension condition and those performing the complex task performed worse in this condition
   • evaluation apprehension increases performance of simple tasks and decreases performance of complex tasks