An Empirical Investigation of Mood Characteristics of Highly Apprehensive Persons

Summy.-60 subjects identified as either high or low in communication apprehension completed mood state inventory scales. The high and low scorers differed significantly from one another across several mood dimensions. Highly apprehensive subjects' scores, however, all fell within the normal range for their peers, while low scorers fell outside the normal range on two dimensions. Apprehension about communication is defined as a "broadly based anxiety related to oral communication" ( McCroskey, 1982 ) . Over the past decade, numerous studies have investigated behavioral and cognitive aspects of persons who experience high levels of such anxiety. None of these investigations, however, have assessed high scoring subjects' mood states. The present research attempted to determine if highly apprehensive persons differed significantly in mood from persons characterized as low in apprehension. METHOD