Response Defined Anxiety and MMPI Variables

The manifest anxiety scale recently constructed by Janet Taylor (7) is one of a few self-rating questionnaires to exhibit significant relations with non-verbal behaviors in a variety of controlled laboratory situations. In general, the relations obtained with the A-scale, as it will be referred to, were consistent with predictions made in terms of a theoretical construct of drive defined in response terms as covariant with A-scale scores. In view of the rarity of such sets of relations, further investigation of the A-scale was indicated. An explanation of the source of the successful predictions might be found, first, in the uniqueness of the A-scale performance, i.e. in the behavior traceable to the items, the scoring or weighting procedures, or the testing techniques and, second, in the uniqueness of the dependent variables, i.e., the non-verbal behavior being predicted. The present study provides data relevant to the hypothesis that the subject\u27s behavior on the A-scale is distinctive from that on other self-rating questionnaire materials. These data are the correlations between the A-scale scores obtained at two time intervals and scores on the nine basic scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, hereafter referred to as the MMPI