The Relationship Effect of Alcohol on Speech Anxiety Essay
Abstract
The expectance of alcohol before the stress of giving a speech to a person with public speaking anxiety has long been considered an option to decrease the level of anxiety. In order to determine the effect of just the cognitive impression of having received alcohol, this study randomly assigns subjects to two groups to either receive or not to receive alcohol. Furthermore each of these groups will be informed of different expectant alcohol levels in their breath before giving a public speech. The results showed a significant difference in the areas of anxiety, negative thoughts, perceived audience judgement, and avoidance reported in self-statements by the subjects. The hypothesis that the level of anxiety would be reduced in the subjects with just the perception of higher alcohol use was confirmed.
The Relationship Effect of Alcohol on Speech Anxiety
Social phobia is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) as a “marked and persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others” (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).
Beazley, Glass, Chambless, and Arnkoff (2001) indicated that those with social phobia are not a uniform diagnostic group but that for some, their fears are more generalized as with others their anxiety or fear is more narrowed to a specific situation (e.g. public speaking or speech anxiety). Narrowing down the classifications helps in the determination of situational anxiety. Hoffmann and DiBartolo (2000) report that public speaking is the most commonly reported fearful social situation and Beazley et al. report that speech anxiety appears to affect persons across all ethnic, racial, socio-economic, and gender lines.
Hudson and Rapee (2000) discussed that there are many factors that lend themselves to social phobia including environmental, genetic, family, and developmental factors. These factors may all be interrelated but all point to a deep level of cognitive impairment. In focusing on speech anxiety specifically, Ayers, Hopf and Peterson (2000) noted that there are three ways that the interventions to reduce the level of anxiety with public speaking could be classified. The interventions could focus on cognition, affect, or behavior.
In the area of cognitive thoughts of anxiety, Beazley et al. reported that individuals with social phobia tend to report more negative and fewer positive thoughts than do those with other anxiety disorders. The current study is designed to investigate further the relationship between thoughts and public speaking anxiety. Specially, the question of how thoughts are related to impairment in functioning will be the main focus of inquiry.
A commonly employed method of self-treating anxiety is the use of alcohol in numbing or reducing the perceived level of anxiety. This technique is used to reduce the cognitive negative thoughts perceived by the individual. Sayette, Martin, Perrott, Wertz, and Hufford (2001) report that the importance of timing of alcohol consumption is important to the effects of the reduction of stress and/or anxiety.
As reported by Himle, Abelson, Haghightgou, Hill, Neese, and Curtis (1999) alcohol and anxiety disorders are intimately associated. This association can be tied to the higher rates of alcoholism among those with anxiety disorders. Studies continue to investigate the question of whether alcoholism develops as a means of coping with the anxiety disorder, or if the anxiety disorder is prevalent due to the alcoholism. Opt and Loffredo (2000) report that the anxiety disorder is tied to the personality type prevalent in the individual.
The situational anxiety as manifested in speech anxiety does show the development and presence of these self-perceived negative cognitions. As the individual believes the automatic negative thoughts created out of the perceptions of past experiences then the perceived numbing of the negative cognitive thoughts would be believed to aid in the reduction of the anxiety.
As many individuals use alcohol as a way of numbing or reducing the impact of negative cognitive thoughts it lends to the hypotheses that speech anxiety would be diminished with just the perception of alcohol use. To test this idea, two groups of subjects will be told that their breath alcohol level is either .08 or .01 just before giving an impromptu public speech.
It is expected that the level of anxiety will be lower in the subjects who were told of the higher breath alcohol content than those subjects told of lower breath alcohol contents. It is expected that this effect will be evident regardless of the actual consumption of alcohol or non-alcoholic beverages.
Method
Participants
Participants were forty (40) subjects recruited from a pool from the University Anxiety Treatment Program. Volunteer subjects were required to sign an informed consent after a thorough description of the study was given to the participants. Participants were then told that they would consume a small amount of alcohol during the study. Subjects were then asked to verify their age to insure that they were over 21 years of age and then were pre-screened for ethical considerations regarding opposition to alcohol consumption, or any history of alcohol related problems in immediate family.
Participants were scheduled for and given a date and instructed to abstain from drinking alcohol for 48 hours prior to the date of the study. Participants were given a breath alcohol measurement prior to the study to confirm adherence to the criteria.
Procedures
Half (20) of the subjects were randomly assigned to group “A” and received 2 ounces of vodka mixed in gingerale during the study. The remaining subjects were assigned to group “B” and received non-alcoholic gingerale.
Both groups heard a ten-minute lecture on difficult subjects such as astro-physics, Boolean algebra, or nuclear thermodynamics. The groups were then told to consume their beverages and were instructed that they would have twenty minutes before giving a 2-3 minute speech in front of a college auditorium of 200 students regarding the topic they heard earlier.
A breath measurement was given prior to the subject performing their speech to record the level of alcohol per subject. Regardless of the level reported in the breath measurement, half of each respective group was told that their breath alcohol measured at .08 and the researcher made the statement “pretty high” to the subject. The other half of both group A & B were told that their breath alcohol measured .01 and a statement was made by the researcher of “pretty low”, irregardless of the level actually reported in the breath measurement.
A version of the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension was utilized to measure the anxiety level after the beverage consumption but before the speech was to be given to all participants. This scale measured a series of self-report statements to indicate the level of anxiety on a Likert scale of 1 to 5.
Data from the Personal Report of Communicating Apprehension was collected and used to form a 2 X 2 factorial design to show the difference in the level of self reported anxiety as it relates to the alcohol consumption or the belief in the consumption of alcohol.
Results
There were two groups in this study, group A having received alcohol during the course of the study and group B having received no alcohol. Half of each group was then informed that their breath measurement was either of a high level and the other half of the group was informed of a low level regardless of the actual measurement. This was used to trigger a cognitive thought in the subject for the purpose of measuring the cognitive differences in the results. The results were analyzed with analysis of variance (ANOVA) in a 2 X 2 factorial design.
There was a significant effect on the anxiety reported [F(1,36)=32.082, p<.0001] in the self-statements between the high expectant alcohol and low expectant alcohol subjects. This reduction of the level of anxiety was shown to reduce within both groups with the high expectation of alcohol. There was no significant effect [F(1,36)=1.444,p=.237] between the groups of low expectation of alcohol amongst both groups. As the level of perceived alcohol increased there was a reduction in the level of anxiety reported by the self-statements.
There was a significant effect on the negative thoughts reported [F(1,36)=27.563, p<.0001] in the self-statements between the high expectant alcohol and low expectant alcohol subjects. This reduction of the level of negative thoughts was shown to reduce within both groups with the high expectation of alcohol. There was no significant effect [F(1,36)=0.363,p=.551] between the groups of low expectation of alcohol amongst both groups. As the level of perceived alcohol increased there was a reduction in the level of negative thoughts reported by the self-statements.
There was not a significant effect on the expectation of success reported [F(1,36)=9.765, p=.004] in the self-statements between the high expectant alcohol and low expectant alcohol subjects. This expectation of success was shown to have no significant change with the low expectation group and even increase in the low expectation group although the effect was not significant between the two groups [F(1,36)=1.794,p=.189]. As the level of perceived alcohol increased there was no reduction in the level of the success expected.
There was a significant effect on the perceived audience judgement reported [F(1,36)=52.684, p<.0001] in the self-statements between the high expectant alcohol and low expectant alcohol subjects. This reduction of the level of perceived audience judgement was shown to reduce within both groups with the high expectation of alcohol. There was a significant effect [F(1,36)=3.682,p=.063] in the groups of low expectation of alcohol amongst both groups. As the level of perceived alcohol increased there was a reduction in the level of perceived audience judgement reported by the self-statements.
There was a significant effect on the statements of avoidance reported [F(1,36)=91.353, p<.0001] in the self-statements between the high expectant alcohol and low expectant alcohol subjects. This reduction of the level of avoidance was shown to reduce within both groups with the high expectation of alcohol. There was no significant effect [F(1,36)=0.180,p=.674] between the groups of low expectation of alcohol amongst both groups. As the level of perceived alcohol increased there was a reduction in the level of avoidance reported by the self-statements.
Discussion
The hypothesis that the level of anxiety would be lower in subjects told of higher breath alcohol content would be lower than those told of lower breath alcohol content was confirmed by the data. The levels of self reported anxiety, negative thoughts, audience judgement and avoidance were significantly lower with just the perception of having received a significant amount of alcohol. The levels of expected success were still not significantly reduced demonstrating the true level of anxiety that would not be cognitively overcome by the use of alcohol.
The use of alcohol on the reduction of stress is probably not all that useful and could be harmful. The implication of the study finds that the reinforcement of the belief of any means of reducing stress and anxiety is dealt with on a cognitive level. This means of coping with the anxiety by the perceptions of outside forces controlling the internal conflicts is in the cognitive belief of the person. The actual use of alcohol does show an effect, but the belief by the person that it will does show an effect.
The criteria used in this study could have been more extensive with the participation of additional subjects. The use of more elaborate testing and screening criteria to establish a better more defined set of speech anxiety suffers. The relationship of the use and belief of alcohol throughout the subject’s history would be of further study.
Further studies would benefit from extended classification of the analysis of the cognitive thoughts and perceptions measured in this study. The potential to investigate the cognitive effect of not only alcohol as a coping strategy but other common coping mechanisms as well such as food, sex, drugs, and music would be of tremendous interest. The need to understand the thought processes and feedback possibly available to those who suffer from speech anxiety would be beneficial.
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