A control-process perspective on anxiety

A view of certain consequences of anxiety is presented in which anxiety causes an interruption in ongoing self-regulation. leading to an assessment of outcome or coping expectancy. In this theory, people with favorable expectancies return to the interrupted activity. whereas people with unfavorable expectancies experience an impulse to disengage from further elTorts. Our view ditTers from other attentionaltheories of anxiety in the following way: we argue. with the support of research evidence. that/Will the renewed effort and the disengagement (and its conseljuent performance impairment) are exaggerated by subsequent selffocused attention.