Effects of anxiety, threat, and racial environment on task performance of Negro college students

This study dealt with the effect on Negro efficiency of variations in degree of stress and in the race of other persons in the task situation. 115 Negro students at Fisk University performed individually a digit-letter substitution task in the presence of an administrator and a confederate posing as another S, both of whom were either white or Negro. In addition, Ss were told to expect either mild or strong nonavoidance electric shocks while working. The main findings, that (a) performance was better in White-Mild Threat than in Negro-Mild Threat, and (b) Strong Threat, as compared with Mild Threat, was more detrimental to performance in the White condition than in the Negro condition, are consistent with the hypothesis of an inverted U shaped relationship between arousal and performance. In addition, there was evidence of an inverted U shaped function between Manifest Anxiety scale scores and 1st trial performance in the White condition. The results have implications for interpreting various types of Negro performance including scores on intellectual tests in racially mixed environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).