Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate what influences on the performance anxiety, assuming perfectionism as an individual vulnerability factor and manipulating the direction of attention as a triggering factor. Perfectionists showed a higher degree of anxiety than non-perfectionists, and the group with self-focused attention showed a higher anxiety than the group with external-focused attention. But when the pre-treatment performance anxiety was controlled, the performance anxiety did not show a statistically significant difference between the perfectionists and non-perfectionists groups. The perfectionists showed a statistically different performance anxiety according to the direction of attention, while the non-perfectionists did not. And the group with both perfectionism and self-focused attention showed the highest degree of performance anxiety than any other groups. Perfectionists were much more interfered cognitively during task performances than non-perfectionists. The direction of attention showed a statistically marginal significance. That is, the group with self-focused attention were much more interfered cognitively during task performances than the group with external-focused attention. In addition, the group with self-focused attention made a worse task performance on the digit symbol test, than the group with external-focused attention. In conclusion, these results suggest that both perfectionism and self-focused attention are important factors in performance anxiety.