PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Disclosure and Anxiety: A Test of the Fever Model William B. Stiles and Paul L. Shuster Miami University
Jinni A. Harrigan
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California State University, Fullerton According to the fever model of Disclosure, the relationship of Disclosure (utterances that reveal subjective information) to psychological distress is analogous to the relationship of fever to physical infection: Both are indicators of some underlying disturbance and part of a restorative process. High and moderate trait anxious university students (but not the low trait anxious students) used higher percentages of Disclosure when speaking about an anxiety-arousing topic than when speaking about a happy topic. With topic order counterbalanced, students tended to use more Disclosure during their 1st presentation than during their 2nd. These results support the fever model's suggestion that people tend to Disclose when they are distressed.
According to the fever model of self-disclosure (Stiles, 1987a), people tend to Disclose more (at least as Disclosure is defined here) when they are psychologically distressed (anxious, depressed, frightened, angry, etc.) than when they are not, and this higher level of Disclosure helps relieve the distress —by catharsis and by promoting self-understanding. Thus, the relationship of Disclosure to psychological distress is analogous to the relationship of fever to physical infection: Both are indicators of some underlying disturbance and part of a restorative process. This study addressed the first of the fever model's two central tenets, that the level of Disclosure increases with distress. The fever model's second central tenet, that Disclosure directly or indirectly helps relieve psychological distress—a common element in many theories of psychotherapy—is not addressed empirically in this study, but we return to it in our discussion. Although levels of Disclosure in speech are correlated (across individuals) with distress in psychotherapy clients and psychologically disturbed groups (Burchill & Stiles, 1988; Mayo, 1968; McDaniel, Stiles, & McGaughey, 1981; Rippere, 1977; Weintraub, 1981), previous studies have seldom examined this rela-
tionship in nonclinical populations, nor have they examined the Disclosure-distress relationship within individuals. The present study's experimental design permitted both betweensubjects and within-subjects tests of the hypothesized relationship. We examined levels of Disclosure by high, moderate, and low trait anxious university students while they were speaking about events that they had identified as anxiety-arousing or happy in their personal past. Based on the observation that reliving events in one's imagination can induce affect similar to that experienced originally (Laird, Wagener, Halal, & Szegda, 1982; Lang, 1985), this procedure induces personally relevant anxiety with a minimum of experimenter intervention and simultaneously provides a sample of verbal (and nonverbal) behavior (Harrigan, Lucic, & Rosenthal, 1991). As an additional source of anxiety, participants were studied while describing their anxiety-arousing and happy events in a monologue to a video camera in an unfamiliar setting while a researcher watched from behind a one-way mirror. The "stage fright" anxiety associated with this procedure may be expected to habituate and thus to be greater earlier in the procedure than later in the procedure.
Portions of this article were presented at the Midwestern Psychological Association Convention, Chicago, Illinois, May 1989, and at the 97th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, August 1989. We thank Karen S. Lucic for conducting the sessions; Margot G. Barth, Cheryl Joseph, Barbara Kappus, Bridget McCafferty, Lisa Mason, and Kathy J. Zimmerman for verbal response mode coding; and Steve Hinkle and Miami University's Social Psychology Research Interest Group for comments on earlier versions of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to William B. Stiles, Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056.
Anxiety and Attention The fever model's broad concept of distress encompasses any dysphoric affect that persists for more than a few moments, including fear, anger, pain, and depression, as well as anxiety (Stiles, 1987a). The model does not deny important subjective distinctions among or within these emotions, but it focuses on the basic commonality that they are distressing, or dysphoric. Anxiety, for example, is a complex reaction involving apprehension, tension, nervousness, and/or dread, along with physiological arousal (Leary, 1982; Levitt, 1980; Spielberger, 1972), and
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DISCLOSURE AND ANXIETY
some of these distinctive qualities are not directly opposed to those of happiness. Whatever their other qualities, anxiety tends to be dysphoric, whereas happiness tends to be euphoric. According to the fever model, distress tends to promote attention to internal material (thoughts, feelings, sensations, and meanings) over attention to external material (events in the world). The tendency to focus attention inward is conceived as an automatic, involuntary consequence of the dysphoria. As distress increases, thoughts, feelings, wishes, sensations, intentions, and values become relatively more prominent in awareness at the expense of ideas about external objects, events, or people. The hypothesized tendency to Disclose proceeds simply from talking about what happens to be foremost in awareness during a dysphoric affective state. Thus, in positing that distressed people tend to Disclose, the fever model does not require that the people anticipate any benefits from Disclosing. (On the other hand, through experience with catharsis and increased self-understanding, people may come to recognize such benefits and seek opportunities to Disclose when they are depressed, for example, byfindingfriends to talk to or, in more extreme cases, seeking psychotherapy.) Put another way, the fever model goes beyond an associative network theory (cf. WenzlafF, Wegner, & Roper, 1988), which would suggest that people tend to have negative thoughts when they are anxious and positive thoughts when they are happy. Of course, a person's degree of internal or external focus can be influenced by such associative factors and by manipulations that draw attention to the self directly (Carver & Scheier, 1981; Duval & Wicklund, 1972). The model's prediction of greater Disclosure during distress does not, however, depend on similarity of meaning. It suggests an asymmetry in which negative affect draws attention to inward, subjective meanings in a way that positive affect does not. Often, people seem to experience psychological distress as an internal pressure to reveal their feelings ("I have to talk to somebody"), although they may choose not to report what is foremost in their attention, as social norms and situational and relationship constraints limit direct expression. People who are distressed are preoccupied with their problems. They may be described as trapped in their own frame of reference. That is, the subjective meaning of events—including the feelings that are engendered—become so salient and so persistent that they overwhelm other thinking. A person in psychological distress finds it difficult to view events objectively or from others' perspectives; instead he or she is preoccupied with internal states and meanings. This preoccupation tends to be represented in speech. (Stiles, 1987a, p. 261)
Anxiety has been understood as a personality trait as well as an affective state (Spielberger, 1972). High trait anxious individuals are people in whom an anxious state is easily or frequently aroused. Theoretically, they may be more vulnerable to anxiety-arousing stimuli or situations and may be chronically more anxious than low trait anxious individuals. This greater vulnerability or higher level of anxiety may reflect temperamental differences and a personal history that has included more anxietyarousing events.
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Disclosure and Internal Frames of Reference The fever model's suggestion that anxiety turns people's attention inward cannot be observed directly, of course, but its manifestation in speech can be assessed by coding their verbal behavior according to a taxonomy of verbal response modes (VRMs; Stiles, 1978,1987c, 1992). According to this VRM taxonomy, each verbal communicative act from a speaker to an "other" can be classified by (a) whether it concerns the speaker's or the other's experience (thoughts, feelings, intentional behaviors, knowledge, or store of information), (b) whether it presumes knowledge of the other's experience (what the other's experience is, was, will be, or should be) or restricts presumptions to the speaker's own experience, and (c) whether it uses the speaker's own frame of reference (viewpoint) or adopts a frame of reference that is shared with the other. These three dichotomous choices yield eight mutually exclusive VRM categories, as shown in Table 1. Cast in terms of the VRM system, the fever model suggests that distress tends to shift attention into an internal frame of reference. A frame of reference is the collection of ideas, perceptions, and so forth that give meaning to an experience (Stiles, 1978,1987a, 1992). There are many frames of reference, but these can be divided conceptually according to whether they are internal or external (cf. discussion of self-focus and environment focus by Carver & Scheier, 1981, pp. 35-39). An internal frame of reference consists of private, subjective meanings; an external frame of reference is objective, assumed to be shared by the audience one is addressing. In the monologues we examined, speakers had little opportunity to talk about the other's experience or to presume knowledge of it. Thus, by design, speakers were limited to mainly Disclosures and Edifications (we capitalize the mode names to distinguish them from colloquial usage). These modes both concern the speaker's experience and make presumptions about the speaker's experience only, but they differ in whether they use the speaker's internal frame of reference or an external frame of reference shared with a generalized other (Table 1). Thus, the expected inward-focusing effect of anxiety should be reflected in the relative proportions of Disclosure and Edification. Examples of VRM Disclosure and Edification are presented in Table 2. Importantly, this taxonomy's definition of Disclosure is based on epistemological features (whether the utterance concerns subjective rather than objective information) rather than content (e.g., whether the information is intimate or potentially embarrassing). A "litmus test" for distinguishing between Edification and Disclosure is whether an external observer in the right place at the right time with the right skills and equipment could tell whether the utterance is true or false (Stiles, 1992). If the observer could tell, the utterance is Edification; if the observer would instead have to read the speaker's mind, the utterance is Disclosure. That is, whereas an Edification's truth depends on the state of the world beyond the speaker, a Disclosure's truth (or more precisely, its sincerity) depends on the speaker's private awareness. At the same time, like all VRM categories, Disclosure describes a type of interpersonal, inherently relational act; one must Disclose to some other. This defi-
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W STILES, P. SHUSTER, AND J. HARRIGAN Table 1 Taxonomy of Verbal Response Modes Source of experience
Presumption about experience
Frame of reference
Speaker
Speaker
Speaker Other
Other
Speaker
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Other
Other
Speaker
Speaker Other
Other
Speaker Other
Mode Disclosure Reveals thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or intentions Edification States objective information Advisement Attempts to guide behavior; suggestions, commands, permission, prohibition Confirmation Compares speaker's experience with other's; agreement, disagreement, shared experience or belief Question Requests information or guidance Acknowledgment Conveys receipt of or receptiveness to other's communication; simple acceptance, salutations Interpretation Explains or labels the other; judgments or evaluations of other's experience or behavior Reflection Puts other's experience into words; repetitions, restatements, clarifications
Note. Uncodable is used only for incomprehensible utterances.
nition also specifies that Disclosure refers to observable behavior rather than questionnaire responses and is a discrete category rather than a continuously measured dimension (see Stiles, 1987c, 1992, for further details and examples).
The fever model concerns Disclosure's expressive functions rather than its strategic or instrumental functions for self-presentation or the management of close relationships (cf. Baumeister, 1982; Derlega & Grzelak, 1979; Goffman, 1959;
Table 2 Examples of Disclosure and Edification Intent Intent
Examples
Disclosure
I guess I was also jealous about that. I would feel left out of little circles of people. I was planning to get a 4.0 average. I checked out my schedule before I even started school. It was pretty traumatic trying to get into the group I wanted to be with. My favorite place was the center of the city. It was a lot of fun. My best friend goes to the University of Dayton. He said there was nothing he could do. Mom always kinda resented having to be moved against her will. He kind of kicked me downstairs. When I went to the first meeting I just sat there. I've got a B averagerightnow. I spend at least two hours every day just walking around the streets.
Edification
Note. Disclosure intent uses the speaker's internal frame of reference, whereas Edification intent uses an external frame of reference shared with the other. Thus, determining the truth (sincerity) of a Disclosure requires access to the speaker's private awareness, whereas determining the truth of an Edification does not. Grammatical form does not determine verbal response mode (VRM) intent codes. In the VRM system, form is coded separately;first-personutterances are Disclosure form, and third-person utterances are Edification form (Stiles, 1978,1992). Thus, "I've got a B average" is Disclosure form with Edification intent, and "It was fun" is Edification form with Disclosure intent. VRM form codes are tangential to the fever model and are not dealt with in this article.
DISCLOSURE AND ANXIETY
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Schlenker, 1980). In many circumstances, instrumental relational goals, such as making a good impression, may override the expressive functions. For example, speakers may suppress Disclosures to avoid exposing inadequacies or vulnerabilities, they may limit their Disclosures to avoid burdening or boring others, or they may produce Disclosures to promote intimacy. In counseling and psychotherapy, observance of confidentiality and injunctions against clinicians treating clients with whom they have a personal relationship aim to minimize strategic motives for Disclosure in favor of expressive motives. This study's procedures were designed to hold the strategic motives constant by asking participants to talk to a video camera while the researcher, a stranger, was out of sight. Method Data for this study were drawn from the Experimental Induction of Anxiety Project (Harrigan et al., 1991).
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min, avoiding long pauses and giving as much detail as possible about the event itself and their feelings at the time of the event. They were then told to pick up the card marked 2, and the preparation and speaking sequence was repeated for the second topic. Half of each Trait X Gender group was assigned to each topic order (anxious-happy or happy-anxious). There followed two additional shorter speaking periods, which were not considered in this study. Three times during the presentation of each event, the students rated their feelings from 1 (not at all) to 9 (very) on three adjective scales: Comfortable, Nervous, and Apprehensive. The ratings took place (a) after the 1-min preparation, just before beginning; (b) in the middle, after 2.5 min of the presentation; and (c) at the end of the 5-min presentation. On the basis of analyses showing that the three scales were highly intercorrelated (median r = .63) and loaded on a single factor (Harrigan et al., 1991), the scales were averaged (after ratings on Comfortable were reversed) to form an index labeled Anxiety. After the student completed the speaking tasks, the assistant reentered the room, explained that the video- and audiotapes would be viewed and coded by others, and asked for the student's written consent (all consented). Participants' presentations of both events were transcribed verbatim for subsequent coding.
Participants Participants were 72 undergraduate students from the University of Cincinnati selected from a pool of 237 students on the basis of their scores on the Trait subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Form Y (STAI; Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983), a 20item self-report questionnaire designed to measure an individual's degree of trait anxiety. Twelve men and 12 women were selected in each of three trait anxiety groups. For the men, STAI scores ranged from 21 to 37 in the low trait anxious group, from 38 to 43 in the moderate group, and from 47 to 53 in the high group. For women, STAI scores ranged from 25 to 31 in the low group, 33 to 46 in the moderate group, and 48 to 63 in the high group.
Procedure During a screening session, the 237 students in the pool completed the STAI, listed four "very anxiety-producing" and four "very happy" events from their personal past, and ranked each set of events from most to least anxious or pleasurable. Examples of anxiety-producing events included parents moving away in the second quarter of freshman year, traveling to visit Taiwan, going on afirstdate, David leaving for Germany, a trip to the emergency room at the hospital, death of my grandmother, and my first day in high school. Examples of happy events included falling in love with Michael, living with my dad, graduating from high school, David coming home from Germany and giving me an engagement ring, playing soccer, realizing my parents were behind my change of major, bringing baby home from the hospital, becoming a Kappa, and my oldest brother's wedding. At a later date, the 72 students selected for the three trait anxiety groups returned individually to complete the speaking procedure. Each was videotaped while describing one anxiety-producing event and one happy event for a period of 5 min for each topic. After explaining the procedure and turning on a video camera, the research assistant (a woman) went to the control room located behind a one-way mirror (however, participants could not see themselves in the mirror while they presented). Following a 1.5-min wait, intended to generate some anxiety, participants were told (through a two-way speaker system) to pick up the card marked 1 on the chair beside them, read the topic printed thereon, and place the card back on the chair. The topic was the second most anxious or second most happy event listed during the screening session. Participants were given 1 min to prepare to talk about the topic, following which they were instructed to speak for 5
VRMCoding The development and conceptual basis of the VRM taxonomy are described in detail elsewhere (Stiles, 1978, 1987c, 1992). The eight VRM intents summarized in Table 1 are mutually exclusive categories of utterances. (An utterance is defined as an independent clause; nonrestrictive dependent clause; multiple predicate; or term of address, evaluation, or acknowledgment.) The classification is exhaustive in the sense that every comprehensible utterance can be classified. An additional, uncodable category is used only for utterances that coders cannot understand (e.g., because it was partially inaudible on the tape). VRM intent refers to the on-record pragmatic function or meaning of utterances and does not require coders to read the speaker's mind (Stiles, 1987b). The grammatical forms of utterances, coded separately in the VRM system, were not used in this article because they were tangential to testing the fever model. VRM categories are independent of affective valence as well as content. For example, "I was frightened by the dog" and "I was happy to see the dog" would both be coded as Disclosure (see also Table 2). Thus, the construction of the coding system does not bias it toward differential coding of anxious versus happy discourse. Each participant's presentation of each event (144 presentations, including over 11,000 utterances in all) was coded independently by three coders, according to detailed VRM criteria (Stiles, 1992). The coders were seven undergraduate psychology major students who participated in coding as part of a laboratory projects course. All had served as coders in previous VRM research (Henricks & Stiles, 1989; Taylor, 1987; Waung, Knight, Lowry, & Stiles, 1987). Assignment of tapes to coders was random. Coders did not know whether participants were in the high, moderate, or low trait anxious group; they were not familiar with the fever model; and they were not told of this study's hypotheses or of the specific interest in Disclosure. Coders used verbatim transcripts and audiotape recordings in combination. Each transcript was unitized (divided into utterances) by the first coder who coded it. The second and third coders were instructed to follow this unitization. Coders were given regular feedback on completed transcripts and discussed coding problems weekly with an investigator to prevent drift. The three coders' codes for each utterance were combined on a twoout-of-three basis. If all three coders disagreed, the utterance was classified as intercoder disagreement. Only 1.8% of the 11,035 utterances
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W STILES, P. SHUSTER, AND J. HARRIGAN
coded were so classified; that is, two out of three coders agreed on 98.2% of utterances.
Results
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Manipulation Check Participants' self-ratings on the Comfort (reversed), Nervousness, and Apprehension scales were averaged across scales and then averaged across rating occasions (beginning, middle, and end of each presentation) to yield a self-reported Anxiety index for each presentation. This index was analyzed i n a 2 x 3 x 2 x 2 analysis of variance (ANOVA), in which topic (anxious or happy) was a within-subjects factor and trait level (high, moderate, or low trait anxious), topic order (anxious-happy or happyanxious), and the participant's gender were between-subjects factors. The rating results suggested that the anxiety induction procedure was successful; participants reported greater anxiety while talking about their anxious event {M = 4.8) than while discussing their happy event (M= 4.4), F(l,60)= 6.36, p< .02, / = .31.' Effect size was indicated by r if numerator df= 1 and -q if numerator df> 1 (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1984). Of course, real (ecologically valid) life events may have both happy and anxiety-producing aspects, and some participants may have experienced mixed emotions in recounting their events. The mean difference in anxiety, though consistent, was modest, presumably within the range of variation people experience in daily life. With topic order counterbalanced, participants consistently reported greater anxiety during their first presentation (M = 5.1, the average of 5.3 for the anxious topic in the anxioushappy order and 4.9 for the happy topic in the happy-anxious order) than in their second presentation (M = 4.1, the average of 4.3 for the anxious topic in the happy-anxious order and 3.9 for the happy topic in the anxious-happy order). The relevant ANOVA effect was a significant Topic x Order interaction, F(l, 60)= 52.09, p < .001, r = .46. Note that although both the anxious topic and the initial unfamiliarity of the task appear to have induced anxiety, its level was moderate, averaging 4.6 overall, below the midpoint of 5 on the 9-point Anxiety index. Trait anxiety also predicted the ratings; high trait anxious participants reported more anxiety (M = 5.3) than moderate trait anxious participants (M= 4.5), who reported more anxiety than low trait anxious participants (M = 4.0), F(2, 60) = 6.09, p< .01, -q = .41. No other main effects or interactions were significant.2
Effects of Anxiety on Disclosure and Other VRMs Participants averaged 76.4 utterances in presenting their anxious events and virtually the same (76.8 utterances) in presenting their happy events. As anticipated, most of their utterances in both presentations (average 93.3%) were Disclosure or Edification in intent. Table 3 shows the mean VRM profile (mean percentage of utterances in each VRM category) for the presentations. The percentages of participants' utterances in each presentation coded in each VRM category were analyzed in a series of 2 x 3 x 2 x 2 ANOVAs, in which topic (anxious or
Table 3 Mean Verbal Response Mode Intent Percentages During Presentation of Anxious and Happy Events Verbal response mode intent
M
SD
Significant effects
Disclosure
39.2
16.0
Edification Advisement Confirmation Question
54.1 0.2 0.5 0.5
17.6 0.7 1.2 1.2
Topic; Topic x Trait; Topic X Order Topic; Topic X Order
2.9 0.0 0.6 0.2 1.8
3.4 0.2 3.1 0.5 3.6
Acknowledgment Interpretation Reflection Uncodable Intercoder disagreement
Topic x Order Gender; Trait x Order X Gender Gender
Topic
100.0 Total Note. N = 144 presentations (72 students X 2 presentations each). Percentages are based on an average of 76.6 utterances presenting each topic. Significant effects (p < .05) are based on 2 x 3 x 2 x 2 (Topic X Trait x Order x Gender) analyses of variance.
happy) was a within-subjects factor and trait level (high, moderate, or low trait anxious), topic order (anxious-happy or happyanxious), and the participant's gender were between-subjects factors. Significant effects are listed in Table 3. Consistent with the fever model, high trait anxious students tended to use substantially more Disclosure in presenting their anxious event than in presenting their happy event. Moderate trait anxious students showed a significant but less marked topic effect, and low trait anxious students showed no difference between topics in their tendency to disclose. There was a significant main effect of topic on Disclosure percentage, F(l, 60) = 8.96, p < .01, r = .36, and a significant Topic X Trait interaction, F(2,60) = 3.28, p < .05, TJ = .31. Means and contrast effects for the Topic x Trait interaction on Disclosure are shown in Table 4. Participants averaged a higher percentage of Disclosure in their first presentation (M = 41.6%, the average of 42.5% for the anxious topic in the anxious-happy order and 40.7% for the 1 The effect of the induction preceded the actual speaking, shown by the results of a separate, parallel ANOVA in which the dependent variable was the Anxiety index at the beginning of the presentation only, that is, after the 1 -min preparation but before speaking about the topic. Participants reported greater anxiety just before talking about their anxious event (M =5.1) than just before talking about their happy event (M = 4.7), F(\, 60) = 5.30, p < .05, r = .28 (see Harrigan et al., 1991, for further analyses of anxiety changes across this induction procedure). 2 The Topic X Order X Trait interaction was nearly significant, F(2, 60) = 3.12, p = .052, i)= .31. Examination of the Anxiety index means suggested that this reflected a greater difference between first and second presentations (i.e., a larger Topic x Order interaction) for participants in the high trait anxious group than for participants in the other groups.
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DISCLOSURE AND ANXIETY
6.01, p < .01, 7) = .41. None of these nominally significant effects would survive a Bonferroni or other correction for experimentwise error rates. We mention them here for completeness and possible future investigation.
Table 4 Mean Disclosure Intent Percentages of High, Moderate, and Low Trait Anxious Students Speaking About Anxious and Happy Topics
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Topic Trait anxiety level
Anxious
Happy
Contrast F(l,20)
Effect size (r)
High Moderate Low
46.6 43.3 35.3
37.6 36.2 36.2
10.85** 6.49* 0.09
.59 .49 .07
Note, n = 24 at each level. Contrasts are based on main effect to topic in a separate 2 X 2 X 2 (Topic X Order X Gender) analysis of variance for each trait group. */>
Jinni A. Harrigan
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California State University, Fullerton According to the fever model of Disclosure, the relationship of Disclosure (utterances that reveal subjective information) to psychological distress is analogous to the relationship of fever to physical infection: Both are indicators of some underlying disturbance and part of a restorative process. High and moderate trait anxious university students (but not the low trait anxious students) used higher percentages of Disclosure when speaking about an anxiety-arousing topic than when speaking about a happy topic. With topic order counterbalanced, students tended to use more Disclosure during their 1st presentation than during their 2nd. These results support the fever model's suggestion that people tend to Disclose when they are distressed.
According to the fever model of self-disclosure (Stiles, 1987a), people tend to Disclose more (at least as Disclosure is defined here) when they are psychologically distressed (anxious, depressed, frightened, angry, etc.) than when they are not, and this higher level of Disclosure helps relieve the distress —by catharsis and by promoting self-understanding. Thus, the relationship of Disclosure to psychological distress is analogous to the relationship of fever to physical infection: Both are indicators of some underlying disturbance and part of a restorative process. This study addressed the first of the fever model's two central tenets, that the level of Disclosure increases with distress. The fever model's second central tenet, that Disclosure directly or indirectly helps relieve psychological distress—a common element in many theories of psychotherapy—is not addressed empirically in this study, but we return to it in our discussion. Although levels of Disclosure in speech are correlated (across individuals) with distress in psychotherapy clients and psychologically disturbed groups (Burchill & Stiles, 1988; Mayo, 1968; McDaniel, Stiles, & McGaughey, 1981; Rippere, 1977; Weintraub, 1981), previous studies have seldom examined this rela-
tionship in nonclinical populations, nor have they examined the Disclosure-distress relationship within individuals. The present study's experimental design permitted both betweensubjects and within-subjects tests of the hypothesized relationship. We examined levels of Disclosure by high, moderate, and low trait anxious university students while they were speaking about events that they had identified as anxiety-arousing or happy in their personal past. Based on the observation that reliving events in one's imagination can induce affect similar to that experienced originally (Laird, Wagener, Halal, & Szegda, 1982; Lang, 1985), this procedure induces personally relevant anxiety with a minimum of experimenter intervention and simultaneously provides a sample of verbal (and nonverbal) behavior (Harrigan, Lucic, & Rosenthal, 1991). As an additional source of anxiety, participants were studied while describing their anxiety-arousing and happy events in a monologue to a video camera in an unfamiliar setting while a researcher watched from behind a one-way mirror. The "stage fright" anxiety associated with this procedure may be expected to habituate and thus to be greater earlier in the procedure than later in the procedure.
Portions of this article were presented at the Midwestern Psychological Association Convention, Chicago, Illinois, May 1989, and at the 97th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, August 1989. We thank Karen S. Lucic for conducting the sessions; Margot G. Barth, Cheryl Joseph, Barbara Kappus, Bridget McCafferty, Lisa Mason, and Kathy J. Zimmerman for verbal response mode coding; and Steve Hinkle and Miami University's Social Psychology Research Interest Group for comments on earlier versions of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to William B. Stiles, Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056.
Anxiety and Attention The fever model's broad concept of distress encompasses any dysphoric affect that persists for more than a few moments, including fear, anger, pain, and depression, as well as anxiety (Stiles, 1987a). The model does not deny important subjective distinctions among or within these emotions, but it focuses on the basic commonality that they are distressing, or dysphoric. Anxiety, for example, is a complex reaction involving apprehension, tension, nervousness, and/or dread, along with physiological arousal (Leary, 1982; Levitt, 1980; Spielberger, 1972), and
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1992, Vol. 63, No. 6, 980-988 Copyright 1992 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/92/33.00
9X0
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
DISCLOSURE AND ANXIETY
some of these distinctive qualities are not directly opposed to those of happiness. Whatever their other qualities, anxiety tends to be dysphoric, whereas happiness tends to be euphoric. According to the fever model, distress tends to promote attention to internal material (thoughts, feelings, sensations, and meanings) over attention to external material (events in the world). The tendency to focus attention inward is conceived as an automatic, involuntary consequence of the dysphoria. As distress increases, thoughts, feelings, wishes, sensations, intentions, and values become relatively more prominent in awareness at the expense of ideas about external objects, events, or people. The hypothesized tendency to Disclose proceeds simply from talking about what happens to be foremost in awareness during a dysphoric affective state. Thus, in positing that distressed people tend to Disclose, the fever model does not require that the people anticipate any benefits from Disclosing. (On the other hand, through experience with catharsis and increased self-understanding, people may come to recognize such benefits and seek opportunities to Disclose when they are depressed, for example, byfindingfriends to talk to or, in more extreme cases, seeking psychotherapy.) Put another way, the fever model goes beyond an associative network theory (cf. WenzlafF, Wegner, & Roper, 1988), which would suggest that people tend to have negative thoughts when they are anxious and positive thoughts when they are happy. Of course, a person's degree of internal or external focus can be influenced by such associative factors and by manipulations that draw attention to the self directly (Carver & Scheier, 1981; Duval & Wicklund, 1972). The model's prediction of greater Disclosure during distress does not, however, depend on similarity of meaning. It suggests an asymmetry in which negative affect draws attention to inward, subjective meanings in a way that positive affect does not. Often, people seem to experience psychological distress as an internal pressure to reveal their feelings ("I have to talk to somebody"), although they may choose not to report what is foremost in their attention, as social norms and situational and relationship constraints limit direct expression. People who are distressed are preoccupied with their problems. They may be described as trapped in their own frame of reference. That is, the subjective meaning of events—including the feelings that are engendered—become so salient and so persistent that they overwhelm other thinking. A person in psychological distress finds it difficult to view events objectively or from others' perspectives; instead he or she is preoccupied with internal states and meanings. This preoccupation tends to be represented in speech. (Stiles, 1987a, p. 261)
Anxiety has been understood as a personality trait as well as an affective state (Spielberger, 1972). High trait anxious individuals are people in whom an anxious state is easily or frequently aroused. Theoretically, they may be more vulnerable to anxiety-arousing stimuli or situations and may be chronically more anxious than low trait anxious individuals. This greater vulnerability or higher level of anxiety may reflect temperamental differences and a personal history that has included more anxietyarousing events.
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Disclosure and Internal Frames of Reference The fever model's suggestion that anxiety turns people's attention inward cannot be observed directly, of course, but its manifestation in speech can be assessed by coding their verbal behavior according to a taxonomy of verbal response modes (VRMs; Stiles, 1978,1987c, 1992). According to this VRM taxonomy, each verbal communicative act from a speaker to an "other" can be classified by (a) whether it concerns the speaker's or the other's experience (thoughts, feelings, intentional behaviors, knowledge, or store of information), (b) whether it presumes knowledge of the other's experience (what the other's experience is, was, will be, or should be) or restricts presumptions to the speaker's own experience, and (c) whether it uses the speaker's own frame of reference (viewpoint) or adopts a frame of reference that is shared with the other. These three dichotomous choices yield eight mutually exclusive VRM categories, as shown in Table 1. Cast in terms of the VRM system, the fever model suggests that distress tends to shift attention into an internal frame of reference. A frame of reference is the collection of ideas, perceptions, and so forth that give meaning to an experience (Stiles, 1978,1987a, 1992). There are many frames of reference, but these can be divided conceptually according to whether they are internal or external (cf. discussion of self-focus and environment focus by Carver & Scheier, 1981, pp. 35-39). An internal frame of reference consists of private, subjective meanings; an external frame of reference is objective, assumed to be shared by the audience one is addressing. In the monologues we examined, speakers had little opportunity to talk about the other's experience or to presume knowledge of it. Thus, by design, speakers were limited to mainly Disclosures and Edifications (we capitalize the mode names to distinguish them from colloquial usage). These modes both concern the speaker's experience and make presumptions about the speaker's experience only, but they differ in whether they use the speaker's internal frame of reference or an external frame of reference shared with a generalized other (Table 1). Thus, the expected inward-focusing effect of anxiety should be reflected in the relative proportions of Disclosure and Edification. Examples of VRM Disclosure and Edification are presented in Table 2. Importantly, this taxonomy's definition of Disclosure is based on epistemological features (whether the utterance concerns subjective rather than objective information) rather than content (e.g., whether the information is intimate or potentially embarrassing). A "litmus test" for distinguishing between Edification and Disclosure is whether an external observer in the right place at the right time with the right skills and equipment could tell whether the utterance is true or false (Stiles, 1992). If the observer could tell, the utterance is Edification; if the observer would instead have to read the speaker's mind, the utterance is Disclosure. That is, whereas an Edification's truth depends on the state of the world beyond the speaker, a Disclosure's truth (or more precisely, its sincerity) depends on the speaker's private awareness. At the same time, like all VRM categories, Disclosure describes a type of interpersonal, inherently relational act; one must Disclose to some other. This defi-
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W STILES, P. SHUSTER, AND J. HARRIGAN Table 1 Taxonomy of Verbal Response Modes Source of experience
Presumption about experience
Frame of reference
Speaker
Speaker
Speaker Other
Other
Speaker
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Other
Other
Speaker
Speaker Other
Other
Speaker Other
Mode Disclosure Reveals thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or intentions Edification States objective information Advisement Attempts to guide behavior; suggestions, commands, permission, prohibition Confirmation Compares speaker's experience with other's; agreement, disagreement, shared experience or belief Question Requests information or guidance Acknowledgment Conveys receipt of or receptiveness to other's communication; simple acceptance, salutations Interpretation Explains or labels the other; judgments or evaluations of other's experience or behavior Reflection Puts other's experience into words; repetitions, restatements, clarifications
Note. Uncodable is used only for incomprehensible utterances.
nition also specifies that Disclosure refers to observable behavior rather than questionnaire responses and is a discrete category rather than a continuously measured dimension (see Stiles, 1987c, 1992, for further details and examples).
The fever model concerns Disclosure's expressive functions rather than its strategic or instrumental functions for self-presentation or the management of close relationships (cf. Baumeister, 1982; Derlega & Grzelak, 1979; Goffman, 1959;
Table 2 Examples of Disclosure and Edification Intent Intent
Examples
Disclosure
I guess I was also jealous about that. I would feel left out of little circles of people. I was planning to get a 4.0 average. I checked out my schedule before I even started school. It was pretty traumatic trying to get into the group I wanted to be with. My favorite place was the center of the city. It was a lot of fun. My best friend goes to the University of Dayton. He said there was nothing he could do. Mom always kinda resented having to be moved against her will. He kind of kicked me downstairs. When I went to the first meeting I just sat there. I've got a B averagerightnow. I spend at least two hours every day just walking around the streets.
Edification
Note. Disclosure intent uses the speaker's internal frame of reference, whereas Edification intent uses an external frame of reference shared with the other. Thus, determining the truth (sincerity) of a Disclosure requires access to the speaker's private awareness, whereas determining the truth of an Edification does not. Grammatical form does not determine verbal response mode (VRM) intent codes. In the VRM system, form is coded separately;first-personutterances are Disclosure form, and third-person utterances are Edification form (Stiles, 1978,1992). Thus, "I've got a B average" is Disclosure form with Edification intent, and "It was fun" is Edification form with Disclosure intent. VRM form codes are tangential to the fever model and are not dealt with in this article.
DISCLOSURE AND ANXIETY
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Schlenker, 1980). In many circumstances, instrumental relational goals, such as making a good impression, may override the expressive functions. For example, speakers may suppress Disclosures to avoid exposing inadequacies or vulnerabilities, they may limit their Disclosures to avoid burdening or boring others, or they may produce Disclosures to promote intimacy. In counseling and psychotherapy, observance of confidentiality and injunctions against clinicians treating clients with whom they have a personal relationship aim to minimize strategic motives for Disclosure in favor of expressive motives. This study's procedures were designed to hold the strategic motives constant by asking participants to talk to a video camera while the researcher, a stranger, was out of sight. Method Data for this study were drawn from the Experimental Induction of Anxiety Project (Harrigan et al., 1991).
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min, avoiding long pauses and giving as much detail as possible about the event itself and their feelings at the time of the event. They were then told to pick up the card marked 2, and the preparation and speaking sequence was repeated for the second topic. Half of each Trait X Gender group was assigned to each topic order (anxious-happy or happy-anxious). There followed two additional shorter speaking periods, which were not considered in this study. Three times during the presentation of each event, the students rated their feelings from 1 (not at all) to 9 (very) on three adjective scales: Comfortable, Nervous, and Apprehensive. The ratings took place (a) after the 1-min preparation, just before beginning; (b) in the middle, after 2.5 min of the presentation; and (c) at the end of the 5-min presentation. On the basis of analyses showing that the three scales were highly intercorrelated (median r = .63) and loaded on a single factor (Harrigan et al., 1991), the scales were averaged (after ratings on Comfortable were reversed) to form an index labeled Anxiety. After the student completed the speaking tasks, the assistant reentered the room, explained that the video- and audiotapes would be viewed and coded by others, and asked for the student's written consent (all consented). Participants' presentations of both events were transcribed verbatim for subsequent coding.
Participants Participants were 72 undergraduate students from the University of Cincinnati selected from a pool of 237 students on the basis of their scores on the Trait subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Form Y (STAI; Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983), a 20item self-report questionnaire designed to measure an individual's degree of trait anxiety. Twelve men and 12 women were selected in each of three trait anxiety groups. For the men, STAI scores ranged from 21 to 37 in the low trait anxious group, from 38 to 43 in the moderate group, and from 47 to 53 in the high group. For women, STAI scores ranged from 25 to 31 in the low group, 33 to 46 in the moderate group, and 48 to 63 in the high group.
Procedure During a screening session, the 237 students in the pool completed the STAI, listed four "very anxiety-producing" and four "very happy" events from their personal past, and ranked each set of events from most to least anxious or pleasurable. Examples of anxiety-producing events included parents moving away in the second quarter of freshman year, traveling to visit Taiwan, going on afirstdate, David leaving for Germany, a trip to the emergency room at the hospital, death of my grandmother, and my first day in high school. Examples of happy events included falling in love with Michael, living with my dad, graduating from high school, David coming home from Germany and giving me an engagement ring, playing soccer, realizing my parents were behind my change of major, bringing baby home from the hospital, becoming a Kappa, and my oldest brother's wedding. At a later date, the 72 students selected for the three trait anxiety groups returned individually to complete the speaking procedure. Each was videotaped while describing one anxiety-producing event and one happy event for a period of 5 min for each topic. After explaining the procedure and turning on a video camera, the research assistant (a woman) went to the control room located behind a one-way mirror (however, participants could not see themselves in the mirror while they presented). Following a 1.5-min wait, intended to generate some anxiety, participants were told (through a two-way speaker system) to pick up the card marked 1 on the chair beside them, read the topic printed thereon, and place the card back on the chair. The topic was the second most anxious or second most happy event listed during the screening session. Participants were given 1 min to prepare to talk about the topic, following which they were instructed to speak for 5
VRMCoding The development and conceptual basis of the VRM taxonomy are described in detail elsewhere (Stiles, 1978, 1987c, 1992). The eight VRM intents summarized in Table 1 are mutually exclusive categories of utterances. (An utterance is defined as an independent clause; nonrestrictive dependent clause; multiple predicate; or term of address, evaluation, or acknowledgment.) The classification is exhaustive in the sense that every comprehensible utterance can be classified. An additional, uncodable category is used only for utterances that coders cannot understand (e.g., because it was partially inaudible on the tape). VRM intent refers to the on-record pragmatic function or meaning of utterances and does not require coders to read the speaker's mind (Stiles, 1987b). The grammatical forms of utterances, coded separately in the VRM system, were not used in this article because they were tangential to testing the fever model. VRM categories are independent of affective valence as well as content. For example, "I was frightened by the dog" and "I was happy to see the dog" would both be coded as Disclosure (see also Table 2). Thus, the construction of the coding system does not bias it toward differential coding of anxious versus happy discourse. Each participant's presentation of each event (144 presentations, including over 11,000 utterances in all) was coded independently by three coders, according to detailed VRM criteria (Stiles, 1992). The coders were seven undergraduate psychology major students who participated in coding as part of a laboratory projects course. All had served as coders in previous VRM research (Henricks & Stiles, 1989; Taylor, 1987; Waung, Knight, Lowry, & Stiles, 1987). Assignment of tapes to coders was random. Coders did not know whether participants were in the high, moderate, or low trait anxious group; they were not familiar with the fever model; and they were not told of this study's hypotheses or of the specific interest in Disclosure. Coders used verbatim transcripts and audiotape recordings in combination. Each transcript was unitized (divided into utterances) by the first coder who coded it. The second and third coders were instructed to follow this unitization. Coders were given regular feedback on completed transcripts and discussed coding problems weekly with an investigator to prevent drift. The three coders' codes for each utterance were combined on a twoout-of-three basis. If all three coders disagreed, the utterance was classified as intercoder disagreement. Only 1.8% of the 11,035 utterances
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W STILES, P. SHUSTER, AND J. HARRIGAN
coded were so classified; that is, two out of three coders agreed on 98.2% of utterances.
Results
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Manipulation Check Participants' self-ratings on the Comfort (reversed), Nervousness, and Apprehension scales were averaged across scales and then averaged across rating occasions (beginning, middle, and end of each presentation) to yield a self-reported Anxiety index for each presentation. This index was analyzed i n a 2 x 3 x 2 x 2 analysis of variance (ANOVA), in which topic (anxious or happy) was a within-subjects factor and trait level (high, moderate, or low trait anxious), topic order (anxious-happy or happyanxious), and the participant's gender were between-subjects factors. The rating results suggested that the anxiety induction procedure was successful; participants reported greater anxiety while talking about their anxious event {M = 4.8) than while discussing their happy event (M= 4.4), F(l,60)= 6.36, p< .02, / = .31.' Effect size was indicated by r if numerator df= 1 and -q if numerator df> 1 (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1984). Of course, real (ecologically valid) life events may have both happy and anxiety-producing aspects, and some participants may have experienced mixed emotions in recounting their events. The mean difference in anxiety, though consistent, was modest, presumably within the range of variation people experience in daily life. With topic order counterbalanced, participants consistently reported greater anxiety during their first presentation (M = 5.1, the average of 5.3 for the anxious topic in the anxioushappy order and 4.9 for the happy topic in the happy-anxious order) than in their second presentation (M = 4.1, the average of 4.3 for the anxious topic in the happy-anxious order and 3.9 for the happy topic in the anxious-happy order). The relevant ANOVA effect was a significant Topic x Order interaction, F(l, 60)= 52.09, p < .001, r = .46. Note that although both the anxious topic and the initial unfamiliarity of the task appear to have induced anxiety, its level was moderate, averaging 4.6 overall, below the midpoint of 5 on the 9-point Anxiety index. Trait anxiety also predicted the ratings; high trait anxious participants reported more anxiety (M = 5.3) than moderate trait anxious participants (M= 4.5), who reported more anxiety than low trait anxious participants (M = 4.0), F(2, 60) = 6.09, p< .01, -q = .41. No other main effects or interactions were significant.2
Effects of Anxiety on Disclosure and Other VRMs Participants averaged 76.4 utterances in presenting their anxious events and virtually the same (76.8 utterances) in presenting their happy events. As anticipated, most of their utterances in both presentations (average 93.3%) were Disclosure or Edification in intent. Table 3 shows the mean VRM profile (mean percentage of utterances in each VRM category) for the presentations. The percentages of participants' utterances in each presentation coded in each VRM category were analyzed in a series of 2 x 3 x 2 x 2 ANOVAs, in which topic (anxious or
Table 3 Mean Verbal Response Mode Intent Percentages During Presentation of Anxious and Happy Events Verbal response mode intent
M
SD
Significant effects
Disclosure
39.2
16.0
Edification Advisement Confirmation Question
54.1 0.2 0.5 0.5
17.6 0.7 1.2 1.2
Topic; Topic x Trait; Topic X Order Topic; Topic X Order
2.9 0.0 0.6 0.2 1.8
3.4 0.2 3.1 0.5 3.6
Acknowledgment Interpretation Reflection Uncodable Intercoder disagreement
Topic x Order Gender; Trait x Order X Gender Gender
Topic
100.0 Total Note. N = 144 presentations (72 students X 2 presentations each). Percentages are based on an average of 76.6 utterances presenting each topic. Significant effects (p < .05) are based on 2 x 3 x 2 x 2 (Topic X Trait x Order x Gender) analyses of variance.
happy) was a within-subjects factor and trait level (high, moderate, or low trait anxious), topic order (anxious-happy or happyanxious), and the participant's gender were between-subjects factors. Significant effects are listed in Table 3. Consistent with the fever model, high trait anxious students tended to use substantially more Disclosure in presenting their anxious event than in presenting their happy event. Moderate trait anxious students showed a significant but less marked topic effect, and low trait anxious students showed no difference between topics in their tendency to disclose. There was a significant main effect of topic on Disclosure percentage, F(l, 60) = 8.96, p < .01, r = .36, and a significant Topic X Trait interaction, F(2,60) = 3.28, p < .05, TJ = .31. Means and contrast effects for the Topic x Trait interaction on Disclosure are shown in Table 4. Participants averaged a higher percentage of Disclosure in their first presentation (M = 41.6%, the average of 42.5% for the anxious topic in the anxious-happy order and 40.7% for the 1 The effect of the induction preceded the actual speaking, shown by the results of a separate, parallel ANOVA in which the dependent variable was the Anxiety index at the beginning of the presentation only, that is, after the 1 -min preparation but before speaking about the topic. Participants reported greater anxiety just before talking about their anxious event (M =5.1) than just before talking about their happy event (M = 4.7), F(\, 60) = 5.30, p < .05, r = .28 (see Harrigan et al., 1991, for further analyses of anxiety changes across this induction procedure). 2 The Topic X Order X Trait interaction was nearly significant, F(2, 60) = 3.12, p = .052, i)= .31. Examination of the Anxiety index means suggested that this reflected a greater difference between first and second presentations (i.e., a larger Topic x Order interaction) for participants in the high trait anxious group than for participants in the other groups.
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DISCLOSURE AND ANXIETY
6.01, p < .01, 7) = .41. None of these nominally significant effects would survive a Bonferroni or other correction for experimentwise error rates. We mention them here for completeness and possible future investigation.
Table 4 Mean Disclosure Intent Percentages of High, Moderate, and Low Trait Anxious Students Speaking About Anxious and Happy Topics
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Topic Trait anxiety level
Anxious
Happy
Contrast F(l,20)
Effect size (r)
High Moderate Low
46.6 43.3 35.3
37.6 36.2 36.2
10.85** 6.49* 0.09
.59 .49 .07
Note, n = 24 at each level. Contrasts are based on main effect to topic in a separate 2 X 2 X 2 (Topic X Order X Gender) analysis of variance for each trait group. */>
