ANXIETY AND DESIRE FOR CONTROL

Commonly, anxious individuals attribute control to forces external to themselves. Based on Self-Concept Discrepancy Theory, we predicted that the discrepancy between the control that people perceive they have and the control they believe they ought to have would increase with increasing anxiety. In the study reported here greater discrepancies were found in both anxious and non-anxious females when anxiety level was greater. Discrepancy was found to be significantly more strongly correlated with anxiety than was Locus of Control for anxious females.